Earth, Thy Cold Is Keen

STUART MACRAE

Earth, thy cold is keen

Lotte Betts-Dean Sequoia

STUART MACRAE (b. 1976) Earth, thy cold is keen

The Captive (2021–22) 1 The Captive: Prologue 2 The Captive 3 The Captive: Epilogue

Lotte Betts-Dean mezzo-soprano (tracks 1–5, 7–9, 11–13) Sequoia (tracks 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 12, 13) Alice Rickards violin Sonia Cromarty cello Stuart MacRae harmonium (tracks 1, 3, 8, 9), electronics (tracks 4, 8)

4

elided compressed (2022)

[10:29]

5

Chaidh mo Dhonnachadh ’na bheinn (2021–22)

[3:43]

6

Haroldswick (2022)

[6:01]

7

Stond wel, Moder, under rode (2017/2022)

[7:01]

8

wodwo (2016/2022)

[5:07]

9

Earth, thy cold is keen (2022)

[4:54]

10

the ebb (2021)

[5:52]

11

Earth ever green the ways (2021)

[6:34]

12

O Earth, lie heavily (2022)

[5:34]

13

The Lif of this World (2008)

[3:35]

Total playing time Tracks 1–7, 9 & 11–12 are premiere recordings Supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland Recorded on 8-10 November 2022 at St Cuthbert’s Parish Church, Edinburgh Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter 24-bit digital editing: Jack Davis 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter

Cover image: Blake Weyland / Unsplash Design: Drew Padrutt Booklet editor: John Fallas Session photography: foxbrushfilms.com Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.com

@ delphianrecords @ delphianrecords @ delphian_records

[4:18] [11:05] [2:42]

Tracks 8 & 13 are premiere recordings in these versions

[77:02]

Notes on the music

Notes on the music

Texts & translations

Also available on Delphian Ursa Minor: chamber music by Stuart MacRae Joshua Ellicott tenor, Marcus Farnsworth baritone, Hebrides Ensemble DCD34258

This compelling survey of music by the Scottish composer Stuart MacRae – a fifth instalment in the acclaimed Hebrides Ensemble/Delphian Records series of composer portraits – focuses on works of the last decade while also reaching back to include two pieces from the composer’s mid-twenties.

Reflecting diverse inspirations from nature and myth, it also reveals underlying continuities: a preoccupation, in particular, with questions of scale and perspective. The ancient Greek hero Prometheus receives an unexpectedly intimate portrait, his human aspects to the fore – flawed yet sympathetic. MacRae’s perception of the natural world, meanwhile, extends from the microscopic scale of lichen to the vastness of the night sky, in which the medium of distance transmutes all turmoil into calm.

‘This beautifully performed composer portrait … captures MacRae at his most searching’ — BBC Music Magazine, May 2022, FIVE STARS

Into this world this day did come: carols contemporary & medieval Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge / Geoffrey Webber

Set upon the Rood: new music for choir & ancient instruments Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge / Geoffrey Webber

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A typically intriguing and unusual programme from Geoffrey Webber’s choir combines English works from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries with medievally inspired carols by some of our finest living composers. From the plangent innocence of William Sweeney’s The Innumerable Christ to the shining antiphony of Diana Burrell’s Creator of the Stars of Night, the choral singing combines polish with verve, and Webber’s meticulous attention to detail is floodlit by the bathing acoustics of St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast. Includes Stuart MacRae’s Adam lay y-bounden.

Three years after the runaway success of In Praise of St Columba, its previous collaboration with piper Barnaby Brown, the ever-innovative Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge reunites with Brown – now also joined by lyre player Bill Taylor and ancient brass specialists John and Patrick Kenny. All four are members of the European Music Archaeology Project, whose own ongoing collaboration with Delphian has captivated listeners and reviewers with its glimpses of the sound of Europe’s ancient instruments. Here, those extraordinary sonorities blend with and emerge around the Caius singers’ committed contributions in seven richly conceived new pieces, including Stuart MacRae’s Cantata.

‘Stunning … an unflinching modern sound with an irresistible spiritual dimension’ — Norman Lebrecht, www.scena.org, December 2009

‘Singing that impresses with great intensity, accuracy and often quite terrific power … outstanding works by James MacMillan and Stuart MacRae’ — Choir & Organ, July 2017

Also available on Delphian James MacMillan: Since it was the day of Preparation …

Brindley Sherratt bass, Synergy Vocals, Hebrides Ensemble

Editor’s choice

Oliver Iredale Searle: Pilgrim of Curiosity RSNO Wind Ensemble; Carla Rees Baroque flute

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The first release from a new recording partnership between Hebrides Ensemble and Delphian Records presents Sir James MacMillan’s extraordinary setting – by turns intimate and dramatic – of the Resurrection story as told in St John’s Gospel. As at the work’s premiere at the 2012 Edinburgh International Festival, the Ensemble and its director William Conway (the work’s dedicatee) are joined by bass Brindley Sherratt in the role of Christ, and by a pristine quartet of singers from Synergy Vocals. A significant landmark in MacMillan’s career, Since it was the day of Preparation … now inaugurates a series of recordings set to document Hebrides Ensemble’s outstanding contribution to Scottish cultural life.

A key presence in Glasgow’s musical life as composer and teacher, Oliver Iredale Searle is revealed in this debut portrait album as a poet of place and of sensation. Three works for wind ensembles vividly evoke journeys and their destinations, in a panoply of sights and sounds stretching from Chicago to Italy, the Balkans and East Asia – and forging unexpected connections between them. The wind principals of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra provide performances of exceptional calibre, while Carla Rees’ passionate commitment to building a contemporary repertoire for Baroque flute shines through in a solo piece that she commissioned and premiered.

‘extraordinarily affecting … It broaches enduring universal issues and, in this wonderfully committed recording, already feels like a modern masterpiece’ — BBC Music Magazine, July 2016

‘Snowbirds has an almost Janáček-like spontaneity and energy … the trajectory of Searle’s music charts a satisfying progression from initial agitation to ultimate calm’ — Gramophone, December 2021

The Last Island: chamber music by Peter Maxwell Davies Hebrides Ensemble

Stef Conner: Riddle Songs Stef Conner voice & lyre, Hanna Marti voice & harp, Everlasting Voices

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Peter Maxwell Davies’s later music powerfully evokes the isolated majesty of his Orkney island home, yet it also bears witness to his talent for friendship: to his associations, both personal and musical, with friends and supporters in Scotland and further afield. Among the warmest was with William Conway, whom Davies first encountered as principal cellist of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and for whom he created the demanding solo part of his second Strathclyde Concerto.

And it was for Hebrides Ensemble, founded by Conway in 1991, that Davies composed several of the most impressive and personal works to arise from his late engagement with chamber music – a genre in which he had previously worked rarely, here revealed as the ‘last island’ of this remarkable and prolific composer’s output.

No songs in Old English have survived from the period in which the language was originally used. And yet everything we know of AngloSaxon culture – as preserved in written texts or rediscovered by archaeologists – presents a compelling, if tantalisingly incomplete, picture of a society in which the creative impulse was central. Riddle Songs is a concept album with a difference: a personal vision of a world just out of reach. Its music and its stories, its seasons and its creatures are addressed or conjured up in hymns, spells, and that most Anglo-Saxon of poetic forms – the riddle. Conner’s settings draw on English folksong, medieval music scholarship and a range of unlikelier inspirations to make something entirely her own.

‘Beguiling, even transfigured … vivid performances’ — Sunday Times, August 2017

PRESTO Recordings of the Year 2020 – Finalist

‘Mesmerising … springs surprises at every turn. The spare beauty of [the solos and duos] is interspersed with starkly powerful contributions from vocal ensemble Everlasting Voices, and it’s all wonderfully captured by Delphian’s engineers’ — Presto Classical, October 2020, EDITOR’S CHOICE

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