Robin Holloway - The Lovers' Well

Facts Words have lain at the heart of Robin Holloway's music throughout half a century of prolific composing. Released on the day of his seventy-fifth birthday, this album brings together six stellar performers associated with Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge - where Holloway is a Fellow - in celebration of the lyrical and dramatic qualities of his abundant output, as well as it's profound symbolism. The Lovers' Well draws on a cycle of poems by Geoffrey Hill whose themes - a Spanish castle, amorous longing, carnal guilt, a wound that will not heal - make it a dark brother to Souvenirs de Monsalvat, a 'waltz-synthesis on themes from Wagner's Parsifal' for piano four hands. Violence is barely contained by the formal games of A Medley of Nursery Rhymes and Conundrums, while radiant beauty imbues two works bringing together all four voices: a mini-cantata on couplets by John Ruskin and a partsong to words by Shelley.