Williams/Daniell/Lepper - John Pickard: Songs

The English composer John Pickard (b. 1963) is best known for a series of powerful orchestral works, five symphonies among them. This album of songs � his complete output for voice and piano to date �demonstrates that he can generate drama on a smaller scale, too. Here he sets two less familiar poets of the First World War, often exploring man�s relationship with nature, and a translation of a ninth-century Anglo-Saxon phantasmagorical allegory. These songs encompass a wide range of moods, requiring soaring vocal lines, declamatory authority and the gentlest intimacy, supported by piano textures that can flare up in freewheeling virtuosity.