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British Music Society

The North West Composers’ association have produced this CD marking the centenary in 2003 of the birth of Thomas Pitfield, composer, poet and artist whose life effectively straddles the whole of the 20th Century. Ten contemporary composers have contributed music in memory of Pitfield whose own composition, ‘The Wagon of Life’ opens this extensive vocal recital featuring baritone Mark Rowlinson and piano accompanist Peter Lawson.

‘The Wagon of Life’ is a setting of a text by Alexander Pushkin in a translation by Pitfield’s wife Alice who had Russian as her first language. The song’s imagery represents the stages of life with the relentless forward trundling of a Wagon graphically represented by the piano motif. The second of Pitfield’s songs ‘By the Dee at Night’, a setting of Pitfield’s own poem, is arresting in its sombre landscape painting, while ‘September Lovers’, fresher, more lightsome in its melodic power, is one of the more positive songs in the collection.

There is no room here to mention all ten composers or the many famous poets whose works have been set. At a first listening I found some of these texts difficult to follow. This is in no way the fault of Mark Rowlinson’s diction. The poets were not writing in expectation of song settings. I found it helpful to go on the internet to get the texts, although thirteen of the twenty-eight could not be found. Even in John Ramsden Williamson’s clear settings of A. E. Housman for instance: ‘And the feather pate of folly – Bears the falling sky’ – is not easy to make sense of at a first hearing.

In all the songs there are three elements to listen out for. There is the poetry: Emily Brontë, Thomas Hardy, Tennyson or Philip Larkin. The marvellously colourful piano settings often illustrate the texts with graphic emotional power, as of course does Rowlinson’s smooth expressive vocal delivery.

High points for me were Joanna Treasure’s ebullient ‘Tango’, Philip Wood’s colourful setting of ‘Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal’ and Kevin George Brown’s setting of Philip Larkin’s ‘Dying Day’ – words to be found under its later title ‘Going’. Its extensive piano introduction is arresting while Mark Rowlinson captures its unstated theme of death with rich sombre-toned singing.