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Living Voices is a new collection of ten inspiring choral pieces composed by Russell Hepplewhite. This innovative project brings together the talents of Hepplewhite and ten of Britain’s most outstanding contemporary poets, each commissioned to create poetic responses to our world today.

The idea for Living Voices originated with Russell Hepplewhite, who invited the poets to offer their diverse reflections on the nuances of modern life. The resulting poems explore a wide spectrum of human experience – birth and death, youth and age, sickness and health, landscape and memory. The emotional scope of the collection is equally varied, encompassing pieces that are light-hearted and comic alongside those that are profound and moving.

Accessible and rich in expression, Hepplewhite’s music proves a perfect partner for these contemporary texts. Drawing on his extensive experience writing for the theatre, his compositions aim to translate the poets’ messages into a vibrant collective choral sound. Living Voices promises to engage anyone drawn to the telling interaction of contemporary life and art.

The ten distinguished poets who have contributed to this unique collection and the titles of their commissioned works are:

  1. Mona Arshi – Tender
  2. Pam Ayres – Leaving
  3. Fiona Benson – Three Trees/Angel
  4. Joseph Coelho – The Diarist’s Pages
  5. Wendy Cope – I Wake
  6. Jamila Gavin – Song of Flight
  7. Roger McGough – The Good Ship Attenborough
  8. Andrew Motion – ‘from: Gravity Archives’
  9. Alice Oswald – Riddle
  10. Michael Rosen – True Story

Ten selected choirs around the UK will each give the world premiere one of these new choral works over the coming months. The project has been funded by private donations and support from the Finzi Trust.

Performances:

5th April I Wake by Wendy Cope, Exeter Festival Chorus, St Peter’s Church, Budleigh Salterton

10th May Leaving by Pam Ayres, Gloucester Choral Society, Gloucester Cathedral.

17th May The Diarist’s Pages by Joseph Coelho, Highgate Choral Society, St Michael’s Church, Highgate

14th June ‘from: Gravity Archives’ by Andrew Motion, Wimbledon Choral Society, Wimbledon High School

21st June True Story by Michael Rosen, Epsom Choral Society, St Andrew’s Church, Cheam

26th June Riddle by Alice Oswald, Whitehall Choir, St Andrew Holborn

5th July Song of Flight by Jamila Gavin, Birmingham Bach Choir, Malvern Priory

5th July Tender by Mona Arshi, Divertimento, St Nicholas Church, Warwick.

5th July The Good Ship Attenborough by Roger McGough, Hexham Orpheus Choir, Hexham Abbey

12th July Three Trees/Angel by Fiona Benson, Voices of Hope, Alnwick Playhouse.

This collection promises to be a significant addition to the contemporary choral music repertoire, offering pieces that are both musically engaging and thematically relevant to modern audiences. The music will be published by Stainer & Bell in summer 2025.

Read an interview with Russell Hepplewhite about Living Voices

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The penultimate weekend in March saw me in London for two exceptional concerts in particularly lovely settings. The experience was enhanced by the company of friends and a delicious meal with a wonderful view across Smithfield (former meat market, now the new site for the Museum of London) to St Paul’s cathedral.

A Season to Sing is a reimagining of Vivaldi’s evergreen The Four Seasons for mixed voices by British composer, vocalist and music director Joanna Forbes L’Estrange. A co-commissioning project between the composer, The Royal School of Church Music (RSCM) and over 50 choirs around the world, A Season to Sing was written to mark the 300th anniversary this year of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

The London ‘launch concert’ took place on Saturday 22nd March at historic St Bartholomew-the-Great, a beautiful ancient church in the City of London. Luminosa Music, an exceptional amateur choir (who impressed with their pitch-perfect timing and exquisite, colourful sound) performed the music, the first half comprising choral pieces by Joanna, her husband Alexander L’Estrange, and works by Monteverdi and Thomas Morley, all with a seasonal theme. This set the scene nicely for the second half and A Season to Sing.

The Four Seasons is a perenially popular work, and this is is not the first time it has been ‘reimagined, Max Richter’s Recomposed, being the most famous example. But A Season to Sing is the first time this music has been reimagined for voices. As Joanna says in the concert programme notes, ‘...re-imagining in no way diminishes our respect for the original compositions. On the contrary it offers a new perspective….’ – this latter point being the most striking and magical thing about A Season to Sing.

Think you know The Four Seasons? Think again! Here, the orchestral version is transformed into a colourful extravaganza of sound which makes full use of the human voice (and other parts of the body) to bring Vivaldi’s seasons vividly to life – from whistled birdsong in Spring to “body percussion” to evoke the storm, a bagpipe’s drone and even some Swingle-style wordless ‘scat’ (Joanna was music director of The Swingle Singers for seven years, and the middle movement is dedicated to the group’s founder, Ward Swingle). New details from the original orchestration are revealed by the choir, such as interior lines and textures, and the entire piece feels as fresh as a spring shower. It’s full of affection too, and wit and warmth. It’s a wonderful tribute to this much-loved music.

The Four Seasons is the first piece of classical music I remember listening to as a child. I have very vivid memories of dancing around the room to the 3rd movement of Autumn

Joanna Forbes L’Estrange, composer

A Season to Sing is being performed around the world by the choirs who took part in the commissioning project (find details of all performances here). The score will be published by the Royal School of Church Music on 1st June (pre-order here).

Sunday afternoon and another concert at a lovely venue, this time the 1901 Arts Club, London’s most stylish and convivial small venue. This was a special concert to celebrate the 340th birthday of J S Bach and to launch American pianist Eleonor Bindman’s new album ABSOLUTE – her own transcriptions for piano of Bach’s Lute Suites BWV 996-998.

A lifelong love of J S Bach has led Eleonor Bindman to produce a number of important transcriptions for solo piano and piano duo of his music for other instruments, including the evergreen Cello Suites and the Brandenberg Concertos. In this latest addition to her catalogue, Eleonor has turned her attention to works originally composed for the lautenwerk or lautenwerck (lute-harpsichord), one of Bach’s favourite instruments, similar to the harpsichord, but with gut (or nylon today) rather than metal strings.

The small size of the music salon at the 1901 Arts Club lends itself to “haus konzert” style performances (such as Bach might have known) and the ambiance at this concert was warm and friendly.

Like Joanna’s reimagining of The Four Seasons, Eleonor sees transcriptions as a vehicle to “revive interest in original compositions”, shine a new light on the original work and “increase their popularity”. And just as in A Season to Sing, new details of dynamics, texture, counterpoint and more are revealed in this transcription for solo piano.

But for me the most satisfying aspect of Eleonor’s concert was her ability to bring so much colour and nuance to the music. Her range of sound was impressive, but never too much nor too little. Perfectly balanced to suit the small size of the venue, she brought both intimacy and grandeur (we can thank Bach for that!) to the music. I don’t think I have ever heard the Steinway at the 1901 played better!

The following day I met Eleonor for a most enjoyable, leisurely lunch, replete with much ‘piano chat’ and conversations about food.

ABSOLUTE is out now on the Orchid Classics label and on all major streaming platforms.

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An interview with composer Russell Hepplewhite

What was the initial inspiration behind the Living Voices project?

Firstly, I love working with words – almost all the music I compose is to be sung. I’d been talking with the publishers Stainer & Bell about a new collection of choral works for a while, and so I began thinking about texts. I came to the realisation that I’m not really interested in setting words by deceased poets anymore – it’s too one-sided with no possibility of collaboration! Instead I wanted to create a connection with living writers, to communicate and work together; to better understand their words with honest conversations about their intentions; and to hear their responses to my music. So the idea was born – and the next step was to find the ten poets I most wanted to work with, and to see if they might be interested in being part of the project. The final step was to choose a theme, and so I decided to go for as broad a subject as possible, to enable as wide a variety of responses as I could obtain. I therefore asked each poet to write about something connected with ‘life,’ and said they could choose to write in any style and with any tone.

Russell Hepplwhite, composer

Tell us more about the process of selecting the ten poets and how their diverse writing styles/voices and perspectives informed the overall collection?

I simply selected truly brilliant writers that I really wanted to work with. All the writers share something – an ability to write directly, with laser-like clarity, and also a sense of accessibility. I’m interested in poetry that can be understood on first hearing/reading, but that also has more layers to be appreciated upon further exploration. Setting the various poems was fascinating, because I could see whether my own compositional style changed according to the poet that I was setting. I like to think the collection has lots of variety within it as a result of this approach, but that it all still sounds like my music.

How did you approach setting the texts to music for SATB choir and piano, particularly considering the range of themes/emotions explored in the poems?

When I was setting the texts, it was all about the words. So I read the poems, re-read several times, worked out the underlying tone or emotion, and then without any further ado, began setting them. With everything I compose the very first step is the absolutely crucial one – if I can’t find a way in then nothing else can follow; whereas once the piece is underway it becomes like a game of chess – a series of next moves to be made. So, with each poem I was looking for that first step – and mostly this happened very quickly – in the case of some poems it was a couple of chords I liked, with others it was a rhythmic pattern to fit a specific pair of words for example. Something that did surprise me on this journey though was how my appreciation of the poems changed and grew as I went along. At some stage, I can honestly say that each of the ten poems has been my personal favourite.

How has your other choral and opera writing informed your compositional approach/choices for Living Voices and the aim to create a “vibrant collective choral sound”?

With this collection I worked hard to create pieces that are colourful and imaginative, but fundamentally I wanted to do justice to the original poems. The aim was to compose music that would be accessible to the vast majority of choirs, but that still has enough challenges to keep everyone interested. I guess my other work has just made composing a lot easier since I have strategies and familiar processes which I adopt when composing. I also no longer feel any pressure about what I compose – I just write what I want to listen to, and hope others will feel the same.

Given the themes of Living Voices encompass aspects of modern life such as birth, death, youth and memory, what do you hope audiences will take away or reflect upon after experiencing these pieces?

I hope people can relate to both the words and the music, and to appreciate how the two fit together. Some of the texts pack a profound punch on first reading, such as Joseph Coelho’s ‘The Diarist’s Pages’ which tackles the idea of things in life coming round in circles, while others take a more light-hearted approach to make an equally significant point – I’m thinking of Roger McGough’s ‘The Good Ship Attenborough,’ for example, where the climate emergency is explored courtesy of a particularly playful approach.

And what do you hope choirs will take away from singing these pieces?

Goes without saying really, but I want people to enjoy singing them, and to get involved with the ambition of the collection – if they like singing one of the works I really hope they will be inspired to learn another one!

Living Voices is a new collection of ten inspiring choral pieces composed by Russell Hepplewhite. This innovative project brings together the talents of Hepplewhite and ten of Britain’s most outstanding contemporary poets, each commissioned to create poetic responses to our world today.

Find out more here

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Guest review by Michael Johnson

It is a rare occurrence for me to slide a CD into my player and fall immediately under the spell of haunting, hypnotic music I had never heard before. But “Anima Mea” (La Musica LMU 094), performed by the Pascal Trio and the young counter-tenor Paul Figuier, did just that. I replay the full 72 minutes almost every day and have not yet tired of it.

Denis Pascal, pianist in his family trio and a leading promoter of the CD project, tells me this music “creates a space in which one can get a glimpse of another world.”

The recording marks a few important firsts. Composers Bruno Coulais and Jean-Philippe Goude created their contributions expressly for this disc, and thus can claim World First recordings. In addition, the Goude version of Gerard Leane’s Salve Regina is reworked for this recording.

Taken together, the spiritual and sacred themes, beautifully vocalized by Figuier, leave the listener transported into a poetic melancholy mood suddenly shifting to a brisk and lively piece by Arvo Pärt.

The over-all style is a unique form of minimalism. The sustained repetition is evident in the most surprising selection, “My Heart’s in the Highlands” based on the words borrowed from Scottish national poet’s work of the same name and set to the haunting music of Pärt.

Figuier renders the score in English, in a powerful but controlled high-pitched voice – long passages on a single note, backed up by the Pascal brothers and their father. The heartfelt strings and piano interpretation would leave a modern Scot an emotional wreck.

Denis Pascal has been close to Figuier since the beginning of the singer’s career. Now Pascal calls his counter-tenor performance “magnificent”, a voice with “very great expressivity”. Figuier’s growing reputation places him alongside such counter-tenors as Philippe Jarousky, Alex Luna and Andreas Scholl.

The trio comprises a rare family gathering of accomplished musicians. Pianist Denis Pascal and his two sons – violinist Alexandre and cellist Aurélien – form a unique ensemble bonded by years of common musicianship from childhood onward.

The title of the CD, “Anima Mea” (“My Soul” in English), was chosen to evoke spirituality, religious or not, evanescence, invisibility and the meaning of Salve Regina – thee traditional Magnificat in praise of the Virgin Mary, love and devotion.

An exceptionally thoughtful booklet accompanies the CD including biographies of players and composers, analysis by Yutha Tep, and the full texts in Latin, French and English.

As one French critic put it, “For anyone who loves meditative music chiseled in crystal, ‘Anima Mea’ is a stop not to be missed.”

Paul Figuier, counter-tenor
Trio Pascal

MICHAEL JOHNSON is a music critic and writer with a particular interest in piano. He has worked as a reporter and editor in New York, Moscow, Paris and London over his journalism career. He covered European technology for Business Week for five years, and served nine years as chief editor of International Management magazine and was chief editor of the French technology weekly 01 Informatique. He also spent four years as Moscow correspondent of The Associated Press. He is a regular contributor to International Piano magazine, and is the author of five books. Michael Johnson is based in Bordeaux, France. Besides English and French he is also fluent in Russian. In 2024, he co-published with Frances Wilson ‘Lifting the Lid: Interviews with Concert Pianists’