The Lovers' Well - Robin Holloway
Catalogue no. DCD34216
Price: £13.00 (including postage & packaging)
Words have lain at the heart of Robin Holloway's music throughout half a century of prolific composing. Released on the day of his seventy-fifth birthday, this album brings together six stellar performers - four of them associated with Caius College - in celebration of the lyrical and dramatic qualities of his abundant output, as well as its profound symbolism. The Lovers' Well draws on a cycle of poems by Geoffrey Hill whose themes - a Spanish castle, amorous longing, carnal guilt, a wound that will not heal - make it a dark brother to Souvenirs de Monsalvat, a 'waltz-synthesis on themes from Wagner's Parsifal'. Violence is barely contained by the formal games of A Medley of Nursery Rhymes and Conundrums, while radiant beauty imbues two works bringing together all four voices: a mini-cantata on couplets by John Ruskin and a partsong to words by Shelley.
1 | The Zodiac Song |
2-4 | Three Songs to poems by Edward Waller |
5-9 | A Medley of Nursery Rhymes and Conundrums |
10-17 | Souvenirs de Monsalvat |
18 | The Lovers' Well |
19 | The Food of Love |