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DCD34336-CD
£19.99
Inspired by his Highland heritage, the young tenor Glen Cunningham presents a personal and heartfelt journey through music connected to Scotland, both native and international, old and new. The focus of the new is a commission by fellow Highlander Stuart MacRae, setting five poems of Robert Louis Stevenson.
At the album’s core, meanwhile, are Schumann’s settings of Robert Burns, showcasing the poet’s influence on the world of lieder, alongside arrangements of Burns’ songs by Scottish composers. Joined by pianist, friend and regular duo partner Anna Tilbrook, Cunningham offers a rich, evocative programme that reflects his deep connection to the landscapes and stories of his homeland.
"in a very clever and thoughtfully-compiled recital, Glen Cunningham and pianist Anna Tilbrook run from the Romanticism of Robert Schumann’s Burns settings to a box-fresh commission from Cunningham’s fellow Invernesian Stuart MacRae, bracketed by earlier responses to the lyrics of Robert Louis Stevenson, with side steps into Victoriana and arrangements by neglected Scots composer Claire Liddell en route ... The sequencing of the set is masterly, and the selection full of wonderful surprises ... If the whole project was built around the MacRae commission, that is no less than it deserves. It includes the longest songs on the disc, the composer using two of the well-known Songs of Travel alongside three lyrics from the more esoteric collections, Underwoods. The piano writing for Tilbrook is every bit as compelling as MacRae’s word-setting, already known from his operas to be first-class, and his choices reveal a much less familiar side of Stevenson"
"My Heart’s in the Highlands is a timely showcase for Inverness-born tenor Glen Cunningham, given his recent title-role triumph in Britten’s Albert Herring for Scottish Opera. Together with pianist Anna Tilbrook, it’s also a thought-provoking reminder of how composers and arrangers across centuries, borders and cultures have responded to texts by the likes of Robert Burns and Robert Louis Stevenson. Schumann’s multi-hued Burns settings from the Myrthen Op25 Lieder are insightfully free-flowing. Reynaldo Hahn’s Stevenson settings of Five Little Songs make no apology for their characterful, carefree amusement. Among sundry arrangements are the exceptional sensitivity of Scots composer Claire Liddell’s “Ca’ the yowes”, and the virtuosic levity of her “Wee Willie Gray”. What really sets this alight, though, is Stuart MacRae’s newly-commissioned Five Stevenson Songs, where imaginative sophistication rubs shoulders with magical enticement, wistful supplication, manic ecstasy, and much more..."
★ ★ ★ ★
Release Date: 24 January 2024
Catalogue No: DCD34336
Total playing time: 1:11:06
Recorded on 11-13 March 2024 in St Mary’s Parish Church, Haddington
Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter
24-bit digital editing: Jack Davis
24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter
Piano: Steinway model D, serial no. 600443 (2015)
Piano technician: Norman Motion
Design: Eliot Garcia
Booklet editor: Henry Howard
Cover and session photography: William Coates-Gibson/Foxbrush
Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.com
PREVIEW
Hochlandisches Wiegenliedfrom Myrthen
Collections: All Releases, Forthcoming, Song
Category: Anna Tilbrook, Glen Cunningham, Song, Stuart MacRae
Glen Cunningham performs Schumann with Anna Tilbrook during recording sessions ....
