'Furibondo spira il vento' from Handel's oepra, Partenope

Furibondo from Handel's Partenope

'Fatto Scorta al Sentier della Gloria' from Handel's opera, Arminio.

Fatto Scorta from Handel's Arminio

Dove Sei from Handel's Rodelinda

Che Faro senza Euridice from Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice

Vivi Tiranno from Handel's Rodelinda (live)

Bach Es Ist Vollbracht (St John Passion)

Benjamin Williamson - countertenor
Peter Foggitt - piano

New yeare forth looking out of Janus gate,
Doth seeme to promise hope of new delight:
And bidding th’old Adieu, his passed date
Bids all old thoughts to die in dumpish spright
And calling forth out of sad Winters night,
Fresh love, that long hath slept in cheerlesse bower:
Wils him awake, and soone about him dight
His wanton wings and darts of deadly power.
For lusty spring now in his timely howre,
Is ready to come forth him to receive:
And warnes the Earth with divers colord flowre,
To decke hir selfe, and her faire mantle weave.
Then you faire flowre, in whom fresh youth doth raine,
Prepare your selfe new love to entertaine.

Peter Foggitt: Amoretti, 3rd Set i. New Yeare (Text: Edmund Spenser)

Benjamin Williamson - countertenor
Peter Foggitt - piano

King David was a sorrowful man:
No cause for his sorrow had he;
And he called for the music of a hundred harps,
To ease his melancholy.

They played till they all fell silent:
Played and play sweet did they;
But the sorrow that haunted the heart of King David
They could not charm away.

He rose; and in his garden
Walked by the moon alone,
A nightingale hidden in a cypress tree,
Jargoned on and on.

King David lifted his sad eyes
Into the dark-boughed tree --
"Tell me, thou little bird that singest,
Who taught my grief to thee?"

But the bird in no-wise heeded;
And the king in the cool of the moon
Hearkened to the nightingale's sorrowfulness,
Till all his own was gone.

Howells: King David

O solitude, my sweetest choice:
Places devoted to the night,
Remote from tumult and from noise,
How ye my restless thoughts delight!
O solitude, my sweetest choice.
O heav'ns, what content is mine
To see these trees, which have appear'd
From the nativity of time,
And which all ages have rever'd,
To look today as fresh and green
As when their beauties first were seen.

O, how agreeable a sight
These hanging mountains do appear,
Which th' unhappy would invite
To finish all their sorrows here,
When their hard fate makes them endure
Such woes as only death can cure.

O, how I solitude adore!
That element of noblest wit,
Where I have learnt Apollo's lore,
Without the pains to study it.
For thy sake I in love am grown
With what thy fancy does pursue;
But when I think upon my own,
I hate it for that reason too,
Because it needs must hinder me
From seeing and from serving thee.
O solitude, O how I solitude adore!

Purcell: O Solitude

Benjamin Williamson, countertenor
Peter Foggitt, piano

Little head against my shoulder, 
Shy at first, then somewhat bolder,
  And up eyed;
Till she, with a timid quaver,
Yielded to the kiss I gave her;
  But, she sighed.

That there mingled with her feeling
Some sad thought she was concealing
  It implied.
- Not that she had ceased to love me,
None on earth she set above me;
  But she sighed.

She could not disguise a passion,
Dread, or doubt, in weakest fasion
  If she tried:
Nothing seemed to hold us sundered,
Hearts were victors; so I wondered
  Why she sighed.

Afterwards I knew her thoroughly,
And she loved me staunchly, truly,
  Till she died;
But she never made confession
Why, at that first sweet concession,
  She had sighed.

It was in our May, remember;
And though now I near November
  And abide
Till my appointed change, unfretting,
Sometimes I sit half regretting
  That she sighed.


BenWilliamsonCT

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