Fand IncWessex Press

John Mitchell’s Barcarolle Blanche is an attractive light piece for pianists of Grade 6 standard, and is accompanied on this site by a recording of the composer’s own performance of it. The work was written to mark a friend’s 75th birthday, and consequently is 75 bars long!

It was written as a kind of complement or follow-up to a previous Barcarolle Noire, written for another friend’s 80th birthday, and is much brighter in mood than the earlier work.

Summer’s Hue is a song cycle setting four poems by Edward Shanks. Shanks was best known as a war poet in World War I, but the songs in this collection are not based on his war poetry. On the contrary, the settings have mostly cheerful and naturalistic subjects. The first song recalls a youthful romantic moment in the East Sussex village of Fletching; the second is an observation of a natural scene. The third song, which is the most wistful of the set, considers the persistence of the beauty of nature after our own passing. The final song, in the style of a polka, sees the poet luring a girl away from the crowds and the light for a discreetly private dance…