Recently described by Opera Magazine as ‘Britain’s best baritone’ Roderick Williams encompasses a wide repertoire, from baroque to contemporary music, in the opera house, on the concert platform and in recital.

His recital appearances have taken him to London’s Wigmore Hall and many European festivals. He has an extensive discography and his recordings of English song with Iain Burnside have received particular acclaim.

Gerald Finzi To a Poet

To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence                        James Elroy Flecker
On Parent Knees                                                          Sir William Jones
Intrada                                                                           Thomas Traherne
The Birthnight                                                            Walter de la Mare
June on Castle hill                                                      F L Lucas
Ode                                                                                  George Barker  

A first version of the song To a Poet was written in the 1920s, but was buried by the composer under the porch when his new house at Ashmansworth was being built, returning to revise the song in the early war years. He subsequently selected the song as one of his most satisfying creations, along with June on Castle Hill which dates from the same wartime period and can be seen as a direct response to Finzi’s despairing reaction to darkening events in Europe. Intrada sets the Traherne poem that also inspired the opening orchestral movement of Dies natalis. 

Ernest John Moeran Seven Songs of James Joyce

Strings in the Earth and Air
The Merry Green Wood
Bright Cap
The Pleasant Valley
Donnycarney
Rain Has Fallen
Now, O Now, in this Brown Land  

Ernest Jack Moeran was a prolific writer, collector and arranger of vocal music, almost entirely in the song form. Of 97 published works, 63 are collections or cycles of individual songs. Moeran beautifully sets to music text by the great Irish poet, James Joyce, about a journey of love reflected through the seasons. Each piece depicts one’s experiences with love and nature through the various seasons of life.

Ivor Gurney 

Dinny Hill                                                                     F W Harvey
The Sea is full of wandering foam                          W E Henley
Down by the Salley Gardens                                   W B Yeats
Praise of Ale                                                                  F W Harvey 

Described by his teacher, Stanford, as “the one who most fulfilled the accepted ideas of genius”, the poet and composer Ivor Gurney (1890-1937) composed more than 300 songs despite suffering from bipolar disorder and tuberculosis. However, he only set a handful of his own poems to music, the best known being Severn Meadows.

Ian Venables New commission

Ian Venables has recently been described as "...perhaps the finest song composer of his generation..." (Editorial – British Music Society Newsletter, March 2004). This accolade is not unexpected when one considers that his CD recording, The Songs of Ian Venables (1998), received critical acclaim from all the leading classical music journals. John Steane in the Gramophone wrote "...Venables has a substantial reputation and output [and] impresses as a songwriter in the line of Gerald Finzi...", Piers Burton-Page in the International Record Review said, "...One's impression is of a composer wholly serious in intent... the evidence here is of a willingness readily to engage with sorrow and loss, or nature in dark mood..." and Malcolm Hayes in the Classic FM Magazine wrote, "...there is no mistaking the emotional and technical strength in Venables' songs, besides their very real beauty – qualities which can only come from an individuality as deep as it is genuine." 

George Butterworth Folk Songs from Sussex

A Lawyer he went out
Tarry Trowsers
Roving in the Dew
The True Lover’s Farewell
Seventeen Come Sunday  

One of the most promising of the Edwardian generation of musicians interested in folk music, his work was sadly curtailed by his death in France in August 1916. He came to folk music through his acquaintance with Ralph Vaughan Williams, and with characteristic energy and enthusiasm started collecting songs in 1906 and continued to do so until the First World War. His manuscripts (now at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library) contain over 300 songs, collected in various counties, although he is best known for his work in Sussex.