The World feels dusty

Dame Sarah Connolly and Joseph Middleton present a rich programme of art songs by various composers. The recital begins with Ernest Chaussons "Poeme de l'amour et de la mer", which took almost ten years to compose and clearly shows the influence of Richard Wagner on the younger composer. Samuel Barbers "Three Songs", composed in 1935 during a study trip to Rome, sets poems by James Joyce to music and depicts three love affairs. Claude Debussy's "Trois Chansons de Bilitis" sets the erotic poems of Pierre Louys, which caused a sensation in Paris around the turn of the century, to music. Aaron Copland completed his "Twelve Poems" of Emily Dickinson in 1950, but explained that they should not be considered as a cycle, but as twelve separate works. Connolly performs "I've heard an organ talk sometimes" and "The world feels dusty", the latter giving the album its title. The programme concludes with the first recording of Errollyn Wallen's "Night Thoughts": a cycle of four songs commissioned by Leeds Lieder and premiered by Sarah Connolly and Joseph Middleton, the dedicatees of the cycle. The cycle, which places two of her own poems alongside a poem by Emily Dickinson and lines from Shakespeare's "Macbeth", was inspired by Howard Hodgkin's painting "Night Thoughts".