Listen & Watch
A selection of April’s performances across Baroque music, song, new music, and opera.
Baroque
April is a founding member of Dei Gratia Baroque Ensemble, which exists to help audiences engage afresh with the original spirit and intention of the Baroque sacred masterworks.
O di Betlemme altera
Alessandro Scarlatti
Rejoice Greatly
Handel, Messiah
Song
April loves song because it is intense, personal, and vivid, often in a short span, expanding the meaning of text and setting a scene in the mind without a scrap of staging.
Beim Schlafengehn
Richard Strauss
One of the pieces April performs most frequently (13 times to date) is Strauss’s poignant masterpiece Vier Letzte Lieder, or Four Last Songs, capturing the complex thoughts and emotions surrounding aging and death. Here is the third song, with the Bolton Symphony Orchestra under Ben Crick.
Das himmlische Leben
Mahler — Symphony No. 4, finale (‘The Heavenly Life’)
Another piece April performs frequently, here sung with the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra under Kenneth Woods. She thinks of it as a child’s vision of heaven, full of abundance and freedom after a life of deprivation and danger, when ‘alle für Freuden erwacht’ — all awake for joy.
Silent Noon
Vaughan Williams
A performance capturing Christina Rossetti’s gorgeous picture of a Pre-Raphaelite rural summer moment.
New Music
April is a keen proponent of new music.
Ariel’s Speeches
Jonathan Dove — from Shakespeare’s The Tempest
A house-concert performance of Dove’s cycle of settings of Ariel’s speeches.
The Fetch
Eric McElroy
McElroy’s evocative cycle setting uncanny poems of Gregory Leadbetter, sung here with the composer at the piano.
Das Fröhliche Leben
a setting of Hölderlin (‘The Happy Life’)
A long and lyrical setting of Hölderlin’s poem. You can simply let it wash over you as musical meditation.
AudioAnna Akhmatova
Death
John Tavener — a setting of Anna Akhmatova
A haunting setting of Anna Akhmatova’s poem, with cellist Hannah Cawston.
Kyrie
Grace Williams — Missa Cambrensis
From Grace Williams’s monumental Missa Cambrensis, premiered in 1971 but rarely performed, sung here with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Adrian Partington. April’s personal highlight of this recording was having Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, thundering out the Beatitudes in Welsh from behind her chair!
Opera
Jane Eyre
John Joubert
In 2016, April had the great privilege to premiere the role of ‘Jane’ in John Joubert’s Jane Eyre. In this recording by SOMM with the English Symphony Orchestra, she recounts her difficult childhood at Lowood School in a bid to break free of its tyrannous head, Mr. Brocklehurst.
Countess — ‘Dove sono’
Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro
The Countess bewails her failing marriage and steels herself to carry through the trick she hopes will save it. Sung with Opéra de Baugé.
Anne Truelove
Stravinsky, The Rake’s Progress
Anne Truelove mourns her long-absent lover, asking the moon to watch over him, then decides she might as well go herself! Sung with the Kensington Chamber Orchestra under Tom Seligman.
Judit
Bartók, Bluebeard’s Castle
April has sung the fiery, wilful role of ‘Judit’ four times in the original Hungarian. Watch her in Green Opera’s powerful production, opposite James Corrigan.
The Monk and the Lotus
Shiru Wang, with Nico Athens
April helped devise and premiere this fusion of Western and Chinese opera, created by tenor/director Shiru Wang with Nico Athens — exploring the tense, profound ancient Chinese tale of a courtesan sent to seduce a virtuous Buddhist monk to settle a political score.
Recordings
April has had the incredible privilege of singing on over 20 recordings. The full discography is below, with Spotify links to the commercial releases.
Available to stream
Donald Fraser Ancient Chinese Lyrics
Epona Arts
Grace Williams Missa Cambrensis
BBC
Colorado MahlerFest 36 & 7 – Mahler Symphony no. 4 and Songs from Das Knaben Wunderhorn
MahlerFest Live Records
Elena Pavlea The Shape of Freedom
Convivial Records · 2022
Osbourne Micrographia
Coviello Classics · 2020
Visions of Childhood
Nimbus
Geoffrey Alvarez Hölderlinfenster
Sheva
Alan Charlton The Cloud
EtCetera
Joubert Jane Eyre
SOMM
Philip Sawyers Songs of Loss and Regret
Nimbus Alliance
Ireland Earth’s Call
SOMM
Barber Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Copland 12 Songs of Emily Dickinson, Gershwin Summertime
SOMM
Further recordings
- John Hawkins Blake Visions – Portions of Eternity · Claudio Records · forthcoming
- ESO Elgar Festival – Elgar Spirit of England / Elcock Wreck · ESO Digital
- ESO Elgar Festival – Mayflower on the Seas of Time · ESO Digital
- Colorado MahlerFest 36 – Mahler Symphony no. 2 · 2023
- Bartók Bluebeard’s Castle · ESO Digital
- McElroy The Fetch · 2020 · YouTube
- Joubert English Requiem · broadcast on BBC Radio 3
- Anne Nikitin The Imposter OST · Redrocca