When Love Speaks (Owain Park) – The Gesualdo Six

To celebrate Shakespeare’s 456th birthday, here is a setting of his words from Owain Park’s Shakespeare Love Songs, ‘When Love Speaks’.
Recorded live in concert at All Saints Clifton, 5 October 2019

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Love is not love when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
Oh no, it is an ever fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken.
 
Love comforteth like sunshine after rain
Love’s gentle spring doth ever fresh remain
And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.

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English-speaking composers have been notably cautious about setting Shakespeare but, although Owain Park talks about the sense of responsibility he feels in adding music to the ‘holy writ’ of a great national poet, his experience in school Shakespeare productions has made him comfortable about working with these texts. When the Maesbury Singers commissioned ‘Shakespeare Love Songs’ in 2013 he was happy to make his own compilation, combining lines from different plays in a narrative arc describing the lovers’ journey from learning and flirtation to sweet contentment (the final movement should be sung ‘lovingly’). – from notes by Michael Emery © 2020.

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[richardforshaw]

Just four singers, but they bring an intermacy to this lovely composition!