Voices Under Pressure

Oskar McCarthy
Ben Smith (piano)

Voices Under Pressure brings together four British song cycles by living composers, exploring how poetry, testimony, correspondence and documentary texts are transformed into compelling musical narratives.

The programme explores four distinct forms of pressure—emotional, environmental, interpersonal and social—tracing how the human voice responds to experiences that shape both individual lives and collective memory.

Programme

Eleanor Alberga – The Soul's Expression (2017)
George Eliot, Emily Brontë and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
17 minutes

Michael Parsons – Three Arctic Songs (1989, reworked 2025)
Fridtjof Nansen's Arctic expedition journals
12 minutes

Yshani Perinpanayagam – Cage Letters (2020)
Letters between John Cage and Merce Cunningham
13 minutes

Cameron Biles-Liddell – Below Ground (2023) * uk premiere
Testimonies and words from Welsh mining communities
15 minutes