HUW WATKINS IN MY CRAFT OR SULLEN ART Mark Padmore, tenor - Huw Watkins, piano Paul Watkins, cello - Alina Ibragimova, violin The Nash Ensemble - Elias Quartet NMC D164 • Debut Discs is a new 4-year series in collaboration with BA (Hons) Graphic Design students at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design. • The work of new designers showcased alongside the music of a younger generation of composers highlights the emerging talent and connections between the two arts forms. • The cover designs were exhibited at the series press launch event on 7 June. • The finals designs for the 12 releases in this series were selected by a judging panel including composer Colin Matthews, cover designer for 4AD Vaughan Oliver and Guardian/Radio 3 journalist Tom Service. • Debut Discs has the ambassadorial support of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Welsh composer and pianist Huw Watkins read Music at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied composition with Robin Holloway and Alexander Goehr, and completed an MMus in composition at the Royal College of Music with Julian Anderson. He was awarded the Constant and Kit Lambert Junior Fellowship at the Royal College of Music, where he is now a Professor of Composition. The centrepiece of this disc, commissioned by Sir Nicholas Goodison and premiered by Mark Padmore, sets Dylan Thomas's defiant In my craft or sullen art for tenor and string quartet.   Alina Ibragimova excels in the virtuosic Partita for solo violin, which Watkins describes as a 'very fast, relentless gigue’. Huw's brother Paul is soloist in the lyrical Sonata for Cello and Eight Instruments; while there are echoes of Britten and Berkeley in the beautifully wrought Three Auden Songs, sung by tenor Mark Padmore, accompanied by Huw Watkins on piano. TRACK LISTING 1-3 Sonata for Cello and Eight Instruments 13’44 Paul Watkins, cello; The Nash Ensemble / Ian Brown 4-9 Four Spencer Pieces 15’15 Huw Watkins, piano 10-12 Three Auden Songs 8’47 Mark Padmore, tenor; Huw Watkins, piano 13-17 Partita for solo violin 15’02 Alina Ibragimova, violin 18 In my craft or sullen art: Goodison Quartet No.4 17’31 Mark Padmore, tenor; Elias Quartet NMC Recordings are distributed in Australia by Rockian Trading, P.O.Box 44, Briar Hill, Vic, 3088, Australia Telephone (03) 9432 4149 ~ Facsimile (03) 9444 6879