Grace Williams: Songs

Grace Williams' lifelong interest in vocal writing no doubt owed something to her upbringing in Wales. The original works heard here in their premiere recordings span the entirety of her career, ranging from her earliest surviving composition in any genre to 1967's Fear no more the heat o' the sun. Williams' folk song arrangements were often commissions for BBC children's programmes, and while her craftsmanship is evident irrespective of the song's country of origin, her stylistic fingerprints are most firmly placed on her understated setting of the beautiful Welsh love song, Cariad Cyntaf.