Listen & tracks

1 of 46 tracks have a preview · 11 works · 46:15

A Shropshire LadGeorge Butterworth 6 movements12:33
1. 1 Loveliest of trees 2:29
2. 2 When I was one-and-twenty 1:16
3. 3 Look not in my eyes 1:56
4. 4 Think no more, lad 1:16
5. 5 The lads in their hundreds 2:12
6. 6 Is my team ploughing? 3:24
7 Long Time Ago Aaron Copland 2:33
8 Simple Gifts Aaron Copland 1:56
9 At the River Aaron Copland 2:45
10 Ching-a-Ring Chaw Aaron Copland 1:38
Let Us Garlands Bring, Op. 18Gerald Finzi 5 movements14:36
1. 11 Come away, come away, death 3:17
2. 12 Who is Silvia? 1:28
3. 13 Fear no more the heat o' the sun 5:20
4. 14 O Mistress mine 2:02
5. 15 It was a lover and his lass 2:29
16 The Ploughboy Benjamin Britten 1:47
17 The Salley Gardens Benjamin Britten 2:40
18 The Miller of Dee Benjamin Britten 1:37
19 O Waly Waly Benjamin Britten 3:29
20 Oliver Cromwell Benjamin Britten :41

A truly successful recital is not a collection of songs shunted together like a string of ill-matched freight cars. Given true commitment, atmosphere and concentration by artists such as the award-winning baritone Blake Fischer and pianist Claire Cooper, it can take you on both a dramatic and emotional journey.

In A Shropshire Lad, Fischer (winner of the prestigious 1998 Song Recital Award) and Cooper embark on a journey through the musical countryside of English and American folk, traditional and art songs, with music by Butterworth, Finzi, Copland and Britten.

Move Records has produced five recital CDs of the Song Recital Award winners as part of its major sponsorship of the competition, and is proud to continue its association with the award going into the new millennium.

Reviews

all presented knowingly and with superb diction ... I would hope to hear more from Fischer in the next few years ... Sound is excellent.

— The Delian, USA

Artists

Blake Fischer

baritone

Blake Fischer graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 1995 with a Bachelor Degree in Music. He has since appeared with the Victoria State Opera, Opera Australia, and in various musicals, including ‘My Fair Lady’ and ‘Chess’. He joined the full-time chorus of Opera Australia in 1997 and has understudied and performed lead roles.

Claire Cooper

piano

Claire Cooper studied with John Winther at the Canberra School of Music and later at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. She spent five years as répétiteur and accompanist at the Victorian College of the Arts and joined the Faculty of Music at the University of Melbourne as an accompanist.

Benjamin Britten

composer

Edward Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) was an English composer, conductor and pianist. His operas are firmly established in the international repertoire, and more of them are played worldwide than those of any other composer born in the twentieth century.

George Butterworth

composer

George Butterworth (1885–1916) was an English composer best known for his song settings from A Shropshire Lad and the orchestral idyll The Banks of Green Willow.

Aaron Copland

composer

Aaron Copland wrote the open, slowly shifting harmonies many still hear as the sound of American music. His vernacular style of the 1930s and 1940s gave ballet, song and chamber works a plain-spoken clarity that reaches from folk song to fanfare.

Gerald Finzi

composer

Gerald Finzi composed the Shakespeare song cycle Let Us Garlands Bring, Op. 18. Its five settings take lyrics from the plays.

William Shakespeare

composer

William Shakespeare's sonnets and the songs embedded in his plays remain living lyric for composers. On these recordings his words surface in art song, lieder and choral settings that still carry love, wit, jealousy and foolery.

Alfred Edward Housman

composer

Alfred Edward Housman's A Shropshire Lad gave English song its most durable pastoral texts: spare, fatalistic lyrics of youth, death and an idealised countryside that composers keep returning to for cycles of art song.

W. B. Yeats

composer

W. B. Yeats (1865–1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist and writer, and one of the foremost figures of twentieth-century literature. His lyric verse, steeped in Irish legend and craft, has long been set for the concert platform.