Chris Murphy is a Bass-Baritone.
Izzy Mohan is a British/Spanish pianist, conductor and singer.
Winterreise – Schubert
Good night opens the cycle and explains the protagonist’s love of rambling and their lost love.
The Weathervane captures the energy of a weathervane spinning, likened to the emotions in their heart.
Frozen Tears questions their deep emotion and their failure to recognise the grief.
Numbness searches for their once racing heart under a frozen river.
The Linden Tree yearns for the calm once offered by the shadow of the linden tree.
The Grey Head shows a desire to be closer to death.
Kolybyelna – Lullyby – Mussorgsky
In this Haunting song by Mussorgsky from his cycle the songs of dances and death
Mussorgsky conjures a conversation between death and a desperate mother trying to
comfort her sick baby. Death is encouraging her to have a rest and let him sing the baby to
sleep ‘Baioshky, Baioshky, Baio’.
Wenn dein Mütterlein – Mahler
This song is the third of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (child death songs) which sets Rücket’s
devastating poetry to music. In this song we hear of the fathers grief he experiences as he
watches his wife enter into a room and instead of focussing on her, he instead finds the
empty space in which his daughter once stood.
The Infinite Shining Heavens Vaughan Williams
Drawing on Robert Louis Stevenson’s poetry, Vaughan Williams captures the awe of gazing
at the starlit sky. The song’s noble melody and open harmonies evoke spiritual wonder rather
than religious certainty. Its quiet dignity and expansive phrasing suggest a pilgrim’s humility
before the vastness of creation.
A Shropshire Lad – Butterworth
Loveliest of trees
When I was one-and-twenty
Look not in my eyes
Think no more, lad
The lads in their hundreds
Is my team ploughing?
Butterworth sets A. E. Housman poetry from his 1896 collection A Shropshire Lad. Written in
1911 they capture a sense of lost youth and the grief felt from a generation lost. The songs
became immensely popular after the First World War as the world began to grapple with the
immense loss felt after losing a generation of men.
Beau Soir – Debussy
In this gorgeous standalone song, Debussy evokes impressionist like harmonies to paint a
beautiful evening. The text outlines the need to grasp life by it’s reins as it will flow swiftly to
the grave much like the river to the sea.
