Through the Centuries: Songs of Madeleine Dring

Through the Centuries: Songs of Madeleine Dring

 

2025 | Chandos

Kitty Whately (Mezzo-soprano)

About

English mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately presents an album of songs by Madeleine Dring. Born in 1923 to a theatrical family, Dring was admitted to the Royal College of Music at the age of nine. She went on to study composition with Herbert Howells, also taking lessons from Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams. She made her career in the theatre, earning a reputation for being able to create catchy numbers at short notice. Sadly, she died at the early age of fifty-three, of a brain aneurysm. The disparate nature of her musical legacy is often attributed to the piecemeal nature of her career; consequently, resurgence of interest in her work has lagged behind that of her contemporaries Elizabeth Lutyens, Elizabeth Maconchy, Grace Williams, and Ruth Gipps. Kitty Whately and Julius Drake have chosen widely from among her output, and end with Dring’s version of Cole Porter’s ‘In the Still of the Night’.

Track Listing

 Dring: 6 Songs

  1. My True‑Love Hath My Heart
  2. Echoes
  3. [tracks 3 & 4 not listed in your notes]
  4. The Enchantment
  5. Love Is a Sickness

Dring: Encouragements to a Lover

  1. Encouragements to a Lover

Dring: 7 Songs

  1. The Faithless Lover
  2. Melisande
  3. Weep You No More, Sad Fountains

Dring: Love and Time

  1. Sister, Awake
  2. Ah, How Sweet It Is to Love!
  3. I Feed a Flame Within
  4. The Reconcilement

Dring: 7 Shakespeare Songs

  1. The Cuckoo
  2. It Was a Lover
  3. Take, O Take Those Lips Away

Dring: 4 Night Songs

  1. Holding the Night
  2. Frosty Night
  3. Through the Centuries
  4. Separation

Porter (Arr. Dring)

  1. In the Still of the Night
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