A Worthy Introduction Song cycles and chamber music by Gareth Walters - heard by PATRIC STANDFORD '... deserves a firm place in the CD library.'

It is a pleasure to hear the music of Gareth Walters again, for far too long hidden away from us perhaps by the changing tides of fashion and opportunity, although his delightfully lively Divertimento for Strings has been recorded three times in the last decade -- most recently in 2007 by the Orquestra de Cambra Terrassa in Barcelona. This collection of pieces will without doubt provide a worthy introduction for those who have not heard his songs and chamber pieces.

Walters, who is now eighty-two, was for over thirty years a Producer of the Music Staff of the BBC in London, and yet his true home was always Swansea, the place of his birth, and where, as a Welsh speaking schoolboy, he was much encouraged by Benjamin Britten who was a frequent guest at his family home. Later, after studies at the Royal Academy, he won a scholarship to Paris where he continued his studies with Jean Rivier and Olivier Messiaen.

The song cycle Cân y galon ('Song of the heart') for soprano and string quartet contains settings of three traditional Welsh poems and two from the nineteenth century in the spirit of traditional verses...

TOCCATA CLASSICS

WALES

UNITED KINGDOM