We are excited to announce the release of our latest recording of composer Hillary Tann’s hauntingly beautiful work, And The Snow Did Lie. We are grateful to be able to present new music to you during this difficult time and we hope that this recording can bring you some peace and solace as we weather this pandemic together. Navona has put together a wonderfully-shot video of the recording session as well as the lithographs that served as the composer’s inspiration to accompany the piece, which you can watch HERE.
The album can be purchased and/or streamed HERE.
This from Navona Records website:
New from Navona Records comes AND THE SNOW DID LIE, composed by Hilary Tann and performed by Sirius Quartet. Tann, a Welsh-born composer living in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains was inspired to write this commissioned work by a series of illustrations from the classic French-Canadian novel, Le Survenant. These images are included with the release of this digital single.
The music of AND THE SNOW DID LIE is broken into three movements, each depicting a season in the bleak northern landscape. Each of these is further broken into distinct sections. The first movement evokes the wasteland of late autumn with an murmuring drone pierced by the shrill voice of decay. The music develops to demonstrate both moments of startling intensity and deep tenderness. The second movement imagines the gentle snowfall of winter. Here, especially, the Sirius Quartet exhibits their sensitivity to the silences between the notes. Finally, the work concludes with a third movement that conjures up the floods of springtime with shivering tremolos, lyrical lines, and echoes of the previous textures.
AND THE SNOW DID LIE is a multimedia artwork to be appreciated by both the eyes and the ears. The powerful combination of Tann's expressive lyricism paired with Bergeron's master-lithography performed by the formidable skill and precision of the Sirius Quartet make this new digital single an event not to be missed.