Listen to The Warm Up: your audio introduction to the performance.

Programme Note

Hugh Cutting provides a rationale for his curated programme. Structured in two halves: the first centred on themes of obsession, grief, mortality, and spiritual limitation (“tethered” existence), and the second on letting go, healing, and transcending those limitations through love, nature, and spiritual or existential resolution (“untethered” existence).

Tethered

The inspiration for this recital came from reading Michael A. Singer’s book, The Untethered Soul. The book is rooted in the idea of liberation, specifically from the negative patterns of thinking that disturb our daily lives. Singer advocates a lifestyle in which we choose to free ourselves from the voice inside our heads that is so often cynical, bullying, and rarely helpful. The first half of the programme is focused on a “tethered” life; unhealthy love, insatiable mortality, unhinged thoughts, and grief – all concepts that unsettle our minds. The second half is concerned with “untethering” from these limitations through gaining a wider perspective on living in the present, our place in the natural world, healthy patterns of love, and the ultimate untethering of death.

We begin with an opening scene from Claudio Monteverdi’s L'incoronazione di Poppea in which Ottone returns home to see his beloved Poppea. Initially thrilled to reunite with her, he stands outside the house and tries to rouse her from sleep; but when he spots Nero’s guards, he deduces that she is not alone, but in bed with his former friend and superior, Nero. Ottone never shakes his obsession throughout the opera, resulting in much desperation and an eventual attempt at violence. Taken from Michael Howard’s song cycle The Painted Rose, ‘So by my singing’ focuses on unrequited love. The piano solo is excessively repetitive, characterising the speaker’s visceral obsession, and, ultimately, unreturned longing.

Franz Schubert’s ‘Ganymed’ and Hugo Wolf’s ‘Herr, was trägt der Boden hier?’ are concerned with a god-mortal divide. Our mortality makes us feel tethered by its limitations when compared with the deities in our religious and mythical cultures. ‘Ganymed’ is plucked from his earthly origins, but remains in service to the gods. Wolf’s setting of ‘Herr, was trägt Der Boden hier?’ explores the duality of the crucifixion: where Christ endures the thorns of mortal pain, we are given flowers in return. We are forever tethered to his sacrifice, which allows for the Christian notion of the afterlife. Alexander the Great is the character in Handel’s ‘Fra le Stragi’, and his bold overconfidence is evident; he thinks himself the son of Jove, but this bravado is not rewarded in this battle where his enemy defeats Alexander’s forces.

Betty Roe’s ‘To God’ shows the wretched state in which we find ourselves when we believe we can’t find inner harmony by ourselves; the speaker turns to God, craving “salve for [their] body and … mind”. They are left in a dark, unresolved state, the opening bars repeating themselves as the piece’s final utterance. The first half concludes with the final scene from George Benjamin’s opera Written on Skin. Here, The Boy, in his Angel alter ego, witnesses the attempted murder of Agnes by her husband, The Protector. Anges’ eventual suicide allows her to escape her controlling husband’s will. 

Untethered

The second half following the interval explores liberation. We ask: How can we lead a balanced life? How can we love more openly?

Gabriel Fauré draws on the symbol of the swan to express emotional release in ‘Cygne sur l’eau’. The idea here: your thoughts and mind are, ultimately, untroubled; not because they ignore life’s traumas, but because your mental faculties are fundamentally level.

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ ‘Linden Lea’ takes on this theme of mental freedom, characterised by the joy the speaker takes in the natural world. The lyrics convey that nature affords us liberation in abundance.

If Monteverdi’s L'incoronazione di Poppea is an example of an unhealthy love, then Reynaldo Hahn’s ‘A Chloris’ shows how we might love confidently. The speaker truly believes that Chloris’ love for him is enough, without any thought of where this love might lead or how long it might last.  

Girolamo Frescobaldi’s ‘Se l’aura spira’ draws strong parallels with the idea of Arcadia; nymphs frolic, birds sing, and the very essence of nature is love itself. Most especially, it’s advocates love which is merciful, and patient: “Let the fair of face … [have] pity on their suitors”, the young lovers asked to “Drive away the winds of cruelty”. ‘Come Sing and Dance’ is a celebration of Christ’s birth, rooted in the human festivity of singing and dancing - there’s a feeling that this is empowering, rather than cosmically limiting.

Closing our programme are three extracts from Piers Kennedy’s song cycle Rough Rhymes. Kennedy sets texts from the English priest, soldier, and poet Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy. ‘Wait’ describes the madness of war, while. ‘Two Worlds’ articulates the trauma experienced by frontline soldiers, where selfhood is split into two – pre-war and post-war. ‘Trees’ is the reconciliation of all that has come before; the half-lives led by the soldiers are eventually made whole again in death, and the poet’s vision of paradise. For this poet, it’s that religious salvation that provides the ultimate untethering from worldly problems.

© Hugh Cutting, 2025