Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert - Songlines - Ann Murray, Iain Burnside

Ann Murray is joined by pianist, Iain Burnside and the Elias Quartet in music for voice, string quartet and piano in this the penultimate offering from the Songlines series recorded at the Guildhall in Derry. Chausson's Chanson Perpetuelle is a setting of a text by the symbolist poet, Chrales Cros, and the poem is a woman's lament for the lover who has left her. Britten's Cabaret Songs are to texts by his mentor, W. H. Auden, and they show both poet and composer in high spirits. Britten's A Charm of Lullabies was written in December 1947 for the mezzo-soprano Nancy Evans and is a much more gentle cycle than the Cabaret Songs. The Elias Quartet join Ann Murray for Respighi's intensely expressive setting of Il Tramonto - The Sunset by Shelley. The concert ends with the beautiful String Quartet by Ravel, of which Debussy urged him not to change a note.