The new album by the Scottish composer Stuart MacRae, Earth, Thy Cold is Keen (Delphian Records, 2023) contains a piece inspired by the poem The Prisoner by Emily Brontë: The Captive, which is divided into three parts:
The Captive: I. PrologueStuart MacRae, Lotte Betts-Dean, Sequoia04:18The Captive: II. The CaptiveStuart MacRae, Lotte Betts-Dean11:05The Captive: III. EpilogueStuart MacRae, Lotte Betts-Dean, Sequoia02:42
In 2021, Stuart MacRae heard a recorded performance by mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean of The Lif of this World, his 2008 setting of an anonymous Middle English lyric. Entranced by the way she shaped its phrases and ornamentation, he immediately began to conceive new works for her voice, solo or lightly accompanied, as well as to bring to completion several other works-in-progress.
This extraordinary flurry of activity – eight vocal works completed in less than two years – is captured here, and reveals the extent to which MacRae’s recent music has expanded to embrace folk-like simplicity alongside the modernist techniques of his earlier work. Similar qualities are found in two works for the violin-and-cello duo Sequoia, while MacRae himself appears on harmonium and contributes electronics to two of the vocal solos.
The Captive, a setting of Emily Brontë’s The Prisoner, written for Betts-Dean, suits perfectly the singer’s pure tone and skilful storytelling powers. (Fiona Maddock in The Guardian)
There’s gripping unpredictability in a journey that courses through the mystical, largely unaccompanied simplicity of The Captive (words Emily Bronté) (.) (Fiona Shepherd in The Scotsman)
HIS new release of works by Stuart MacRae is in short, a striking collection. The use of a wide variety of texts from Rossetti, Brontë, Alwynne Pritchard, the Poetic Edda, Gaelic and Middle English demonstrates his love and skill with text. (Morning Star for Peace and Socialism)
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