Watkins, Huw: Echo

for soprano and piano

Texts by Rossetti, Dickinson, Larkin, Yeats and Harsent

Echo was written for Ruby Hughes, and given its premiere, with Julius Drake at the piano, at Carnegie Hall, New York, on 13 October 2017. It is the third piece (following my one-act opera In the Locked Room, and my song cycle with string orchestra, Remember) that I’ve written for Ruby’s exquisite voice, which was very much in my mind as I wrote the music. There are five songs altogether, beginning with a setting of Christina Rossetti’s ‘Echo’ which gives the cycle its title. After settings of Dickinson, Larkin and Yeats, the cycle ends with a short but searingly powerful poem by David Harsent. Echo was a co-commission between Carnegie Hall and the Presteigne Festival; it received its UK premiere on 25 August 2018 at St Andrew’s Church, Presteigne performed by Ruby Hughes and Huw Watkins.