Dame Sarah Connolly / Joseph Middleton COME TO ME IN MY DREAMS

I had a pretty good time at the Royal College of Music in the mid-1980s. As a joint first study student, while I loved singing in Sir David Willcocks’s chamber choir, I probably saw myself principally as a pianist, hooked on song repertoire. 

The cocoon-like basement library (where I spent at least half of each week sprawled on the cerise carpet among sheaves of music) houses an astonishing collection of British songs. It also keeps a wonderful discography from which I learned what makes a song come alive, particularly from Ben Luxon, Peter Pears and Britten, Janet Baker, and Kathleen Ferrier. For this disc I have attempted to create a snapshot of over 120 years of song, tracing the lineage from Stanford to Turnage. I tried to find suitable songs by Coleridge-Taylor and Elizabeth Maconchy but no luck this time. However, two beautiful early compositions by Muriel Herbert and Rebecca Clarke stand proudly alongside songs by Frank Bridge, Thomas Dunhill, and Gustav Holst. 

I am thrilled that Colin Matthews and the Britten Estate gave permission to Joseph 20 Middleton and me to record the world premiere of two unknown songs that Benjamin Britten had composed for but in the event excluded from A Charm of Lullabies. 

Mark Turnage very kindly wrote me a song to bring the programme right up to the present day. 

As he knew that Michael Tippett’s ‘Full fathom five’ would be on the disc, I sense that Mark was inspired by similar ghostly chimes: 

Hark! now I hear them, – 

Ding-dong, bell. (Dame Sarah Connolly)