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Lamenting Lullaby
for Oboe, Violin, Viola and Cello Lamenting Lullaby was composed in 2018, based on material written in 2007. It is a meditation on the death of a child at birth, and of quiet grief. The piece is in three sections: slow, sustained music for the strings of restrained tension and release; a distant solo oboe call; and folk-like lullaby music of gentle simplicity, with lamenting phrases from the oboe. It was first performed on June 2018 at the Fitzrovia Chapel, London by Daniel Bates (oboe), Laura Lutzke (violin), Adam Newman (viola), Hannah Sloane (cello) Duration: 9 mins Available to purchase from Aria Editions here The piece has been recorded by the original performers here: |
Reviews of the recording:
BBC Music Magazine
Iain Farrington’s Lamenting Lullaby, premiered in 2018 by this ensemble, is a three part elegy of the ‘quiet grief’ after the death of a child at birth. It is moving, deeply tender, exquisitely played by this ensemble, its final warm, folk inflected ensemble flung in to relief by the echoed notes of the lone oboe.
Gramophone
Iain Farrington’s Lamenting Lullaby of 2018, from which the recording takes its title, dwells on the grief and tragedy of infant death at childbirth. A haunting threnody or ‘meditation’ (to use the composer’s description), it was largely inspired by the exquisite Fitzrovia Chapel, a surviving gem of the now defunct Middlesex Hospital and its early pioneering maternal facilities, whose internal architecture influenced the spatial dimension of the work’s first performance with its distant ‘offstage’ oboe.
BBC Music Magazine
Iain Farrington’s Lamenting Lullaby, premiered in 2018 by this ensemble, is a three part elegy of the ‘quiet grief’ after the death of a child at birth. It is moving, deeply tender, exquisitely played by this ensemble, its final warm, folk inflected ensemble flung in to relief by the echoed notes of the lone oboe.
Gramophone
Iain Farrington’s Lamenting Lullaby of 2018, from which the recording takes its title, dwells on the grief and tragedy of infant death at childbirth. A haunting threnody or ‘meditation’ (to use the composer’s description), it was largely inspired by the exquisite Fitzrovia Chapel, a surviving gem of the now defunct Middlesex Hospital and its early pioneering maternal facilities, whose internal architecture influenced the spatial dimension of the work’s first performance with its distant ‘offstage’ oboe.