Label: Signum Classics
Format: CD
Barcode: 0635212073926
Catalog number: SIGCD 739
Releasedate: 22-09-23
Format: CD
Barcode: 0635212073926
Releasedate: 22-09-23
- All works are KS commissions, with 6 of tracks world premiere recordings (including Ola Gjeilo, Judith Bingham & Joe Hisaishi)
- Overall theme of myth, magic and surreality, which creates entertainment, story-telling and trademark comedy, suitable for families/children
- It celebrates the 100th anniversary of György Ligeti's birth, with a fresh recording of one of his funniest and most accessible works (with corresponding illustrations commissioned to help enhance understanding of this complex music).
Wonderland is full of magic and myth. Containing exclusively works commissioned by The King’s Singers across their 55 years, the album celebrates their trademark musical storytelling, with no shortage of comedy. György Ligeti’s six Nonsense Madrigals, each setting playful children’s poetry or extracts from Lewis
Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, provide a musical spine to the album, commemorating 100 years since the composer’s birth in 1923. From just over 50 years ago, the fairytale The Musicians of Bremen (1972) - set to music by the Australian composer and Master of the Queen’s Music Malcolm Williamson -sits alongside Time Piece (1972) by Paul Patterson, which tells an eccentric alternative creation story. These myth-based works have recent companions such as Judith Bingham’s extended work Tricksters (2019), which unearths what could happen if miscreants from different world mythologies could come together for the first time, and Ola Gjeilo’s A Dream within a Dream which questions the very nature of perception
and reality. The album also features the legendary Japanese film and game composer Joe Hisaishi’s first ever choral work, I was there (2022), focussing on the cultural memory of tragic events such as 9/11 and the 2011
Japan Earthquake. Themes of hope and positivity, centred on the natural world, emerge in Makiko Kinoshita’s Ashita no uta (Song for tomorrow) (2020) and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers’ Alive (2022).
Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, provide a musical spine to the album, commemorating 100 years since the composer’s birth in 1923. From just over 50 years ago, the fairytale The Musicians of Bremen (1972) - set to music by the Australian composer and Master of the Queen’s Music Malcolm Williamson -sits alongside Time Piece (1972) by Paul Patterson, which tells an eccentric alternative creation story. These myth-based works have recent companions such as Judith Bingham’s extended work Tricksters (2019), which unearths what could happen if miscreants from different world mythologies could come together for the first time, and Ola Gjeilo’s A Dream within a Dream which questions the very nature of perception
and reality. The album also features the legendary Japanese film and game composer Joe Hisaishi’s first ever choral work, I was there (2022), focussing on the cultural memory of tragic events such as 9/11 and the 2011
Japan Earthquake. Themes of hope and positivity, centred on the natural world, emerge in Makiko Kinoshita’s Ashita no uta (Song for tomorrow) (2020) and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers’ Alive (2022).
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1Ashita no uta03:08
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2Nonsense MadrigalsI. Two Dreams and Little Bat02:10
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3A Dream within a Dream07:22
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4Nonsense MadrigalsII. Cuckoo in the Pear-Tree01:35
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5Alive04:42
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6Nonsense MadrigalsIII. The Alphabet03:28
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7I was there08:27
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8Nonsense MadrigalsIV. Flying Robert03:00
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9Tricksters09:43
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10Nonsense MadrigalsV. The Lobster Quadrille01:47
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11The Musicians of Bremen10:14
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12Nonsense MadrigalsVI. A Long, Sad Tale01:38
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13Time Piece09:45