Grace-Evangeline Mason and Sophie Bevan MBE
Photo: Gareth Jones
Sophie Bevan, Ryan Wigglesworth, and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Photo: Gareth Jones
“Mason writes music as exquisite as her name, made of bright sounds that wheel round each other like colours in a kaleidoscope.”
“A beguiling song cycle soaked in nature. ”
Thursday night saw the world premiere of The Hart, a new song cycle written for soprano Sophie Bevan MBE, Ryan Wigglesworth and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
‘THE HART (2025) is inspired by nature and folklore and written as an optional partner piece to The Imagined Forest. From Arthurian Legend to Hungarian and Celtic mythology, a white stag, or a white hart, has featured in folktales as an otherworldly messenger, or a sign of hope, due to its rare and elusive nature. THE HART explores these themes and, through poetry from Sara Teasdale, Oscar Wilde, and myself, portrays an impressionistic retelling of a tale inspired by folklore across its five movements in which the narrator, void of direction, reflects on her previous, mysterious encounter and strives to see the deer in the forest, once more.
The first movement, If I had gone before, opens with a mystical yet pensive sound-world with a setting of Teasdale’s Late October, in which the narrator instructs us to ‘listen’ to the ghostly sounds of the woodland around her. This is followed by the shadowy and reflective second movement, And suddenly, I am in the woods again, in which the narrator laments about her previous encounter with the deer, a vestige of beauty and magic, from an earlier time. The livelier third movement, Out of the Mid-Wood’s Twilight, is a setting of Wilde’s In the Forest depicting the sudden appearance of the deer, which brings a fleeting moment of joy, before vanishing again. In the fourth movement, with words after Teasdale’s The Star, the narrator returns to the woods describing a glowing star seeking its reflection in a pool, before the deer gently reappears and they reunite from afar. In the final movement, Evening, and all the birds, a setting of Teasdale’s Dusk in June, the narrator expresses her enduring enchantment with the world as the birds ‘ease their hearts of joy for miles around’ and she, ‘like the birds,’ sings before night.’ - G. E. Mason
The concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on the 14th July.
Grace-Evangeline Mason, Sophie Bevan MBE, and Ryan Wigglesworth
Photo: Gareth Jones
