The New Winter Songbook

I'm always happy to see soprano Rebecca Lea in the BBC Singers lineup (plus Exaudi, I Fagiolini, etc etc. How do busy professional singers manage all this demanding music with such elan?!) Rebecca is this week recording The New Winter Songbook with pianist Caroline Jaya-Ratnam. It's her own curated collection which she has assembled from just about every new music source in the UK, including commissions of her own and community projects.

When Rebecca asked me if I by any chance had written an unrecorded song about Winter, I was delighted that I could reply, Yes! The title is On White Meadows. It's a song (really a tiny song cycle of five Schubertian haikus) I wrote during the lockdown, as the test piece for an international song contest in Graz, Franz Schubert und die Musik der Moderne. A stipulation of this contest was that the young performers would only have 36 hours to learn the new song, without advice from any outside source, before performing it in the final round. This involved top secret conditions in Graz, which I visited while being placed under a code of silence as regards "On White Meadows". It was therefore an extra pleasure to visit the rehearsal by Rebecca and Caroline in Maida Vale Studios, with composer remarks welcomed.

PICTURED: While avoiding the performers in Graz in July 2022, I had extra opportunity to explore this fascinating city. Don't miss it! (Roughly a 2h30' train ride south of Vienna.) And here's the video of the fine young Japanese duo who were judged the best interpreters of "On White Meadows" during that contest.