Whither Must I Wander takes its name from one of the Songs of Travel xºby Ralph Vaughan Williams, a song cycle that is at the heart of this release. From the trudging Vagabond to the more playful Roadside Fire and the radiance of Youth and Love, Vaughan Williams explores every bittersweet nuance of journeying.
The album also features the exhilarating vigour of Frederick Keel’s Three Salt-Water Ballads, and the magnificent King David by Herbert Howells. We then travel from England across the Atlantic to hear American songs by Aaron Copland, with one of his Old American Songs, the serene At the River, and by contemporary composer Steve Mark Kohn, whose Ten Thousand Miles Away uses traditional folk song to navigate the emotional strains of missing a loved-one far away.
Liverman and King end their recital with the Goethe-inspired Wanderer’s Night Song by Russian composer Nikolai Medtner, and with the beautiful Mondnacht by Robert Schumann.
