As settings of poems rather than ‘abstract’ music, these pieces are best left to speak for themselves. Williamson’s settings are lyrical, romantic and passionate as befits the texts and are a very worthy addition to the canon of modern English song.

After a Choral Scholarship at Oxford, Mark Rowlinson spent the 1970s as a singer based in London. He was successively a member of the choirs of the London Oratory and Westminster Abbey, and was a frequent member of the Monteverdi and John Alldis choirs and the BBC Singers, and was a founder member of The Sixteen.

In 1979 the offer of a post as a music producer for BBC Radio 3, based in Manchester, was irresistible and Mark spent the next 20 years working with some of the world’s great soloists, chamber ensembles, orchestras and conductors.

Leaving the BBC in 1999, Mark then resumed his former career as a singer to considerable effect. He has recently been a soloist in Beijing, Mexico City, New York, San Francisco, Jerusalem, Paris, Warsaw, Amsterdam, Bergen, Rome and a host of major British venues such as the Royal Festival Hall, Bridgewater Hall, the Sage, King’s College, Cambridge, York Minster, Coventry Cathedral and Birmingham Town Hall.

Mark is a Tutor at the Royal Northern College of Music and champions the work of composers from the North-West of England.

Track Listing:
- She walks in beauty (Byron)
- She is not fair (Coleridge)
- When we two parted (Byron)
- Before the battle (Sassoon)
- I stood with the dead (Sassoon)
Texts by A E Housman:
- Hughley Steeple
- I lay me down and slumber
- Sinner's rue
- Parta Quies
- He looked at me with eyes I thought
- Others, I am not the first
- Farewell to barn and stack and tree
- When the lad for longing sighs
- I hoed and trenched and weeded
- Oh were he and I together
- The new mistress
- Oh, see how thick the gold cup flowers
- Easter Hymn
- Revolution
- In valleys of springs of flowers
- March