We’re delighted to announce the release of Vol. 2 of Stephen Dodgson’s solo songs: The Distances Between (SOMMCD 0673). The album includes 17 first recordings and marks the 10th anniversary of his death.
The Distances Between features soprano Ailish Tynan, mezzo-soprano Katie Bray and baritone Marcus Farnsworth, accompanied by Christopher Glynn (piano), Mark Eden (guitar) and Ian Wilson (recorder).
About the songs
The Distances Between (1969-88), sets five poems by Louis MacNeice – “a ‘natural’ for music with his keen ear for rhyme and rhythm, his sly verbal colour”, Dodgson approvingly wrote – for soprano, baritone and piano.
Three songs for mezzo-soprano and piano from the first series of Bush Ballads (1974) are “character songs” taken from Australian poets and marked by sly wit and a rather macabre finale. Setting Charles Causley, Riley & Co. (2009) for baritone, guitar and recorder is a compendium of four pithily told but evocative ballads.
Five other solo variegated songs and four preludial piano Bagatelles make much of what Robert Matthew-Walker’s informative notes describe as Dodgson’s “inherent creative language [and] fluent expressive lines”.
Volume 1, The Peasant Poet (SOMMCD 0659) was hailed by Opera Today as “an incredibly interesting and engaging disc… done excellent service by all the performers”.
