Sometime I Sing is a CD of music for tenor and guitar by Alec Roth performed by Mark Padmore and Morgan Szymanski. The most substantial work is My Lute and I which sets nine poems by 16th century poet and courtier Sir Thomas Wyatt. There’s a definite attempt here to evoke the lute with the result that the guitar part is quite muted, The texts are fairly conventional love poetry of the period and there’s a fair bit of melodic invention in the vocal line. For some reason “How?” is largely set to the tune of “The Seeds of Love”. Padmore sings very clearly and beautifully in a characteristically English way. So pleasant to listen to but not very exciting.
Sometime I Sing
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Having enjoyed the performance in the Toronto Music Garden of Alec Roth’s Songs in Time of War I downloaded the CD of the original version with violin rather than erhu. There are actually three pieces on the CD. There’s the complete Songs in Time of War with tenor Mark Padmore, guitarist Morgan Szymanski, harpist Alison Nicholls and violinist Philippe Honoré, there are two solo guitar pieces Canción de la Luna and Danza de la Luna (Szymanski) and Padmore and Szymanski collaborating on Chinese Gardens; a setting of four Vikram Seth poems inspired by the Ming dynasty gardens at Suzhou.
The season finale for the Music Garden this summer was a performance of Alec Roth’s Songs in Times of War. These are settings of poems by Du Fu translated by Vikram Seth. Du Fu was a Chinese court poet who lived through times (8th century CE) when millions died or were displaced by rebellion and civil war. Although more allusive than direct (most of the time), the poems are grim but have an elusive beauty which is reflected in Roth’s setting. Originally scored for tenor, guitar, harp and violin we got to hear a new version (by the composer) with violin replaced by 
operaramblings 