As part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's milestone Shakespeare Live! from the RSC event last week, marking the 400th anniversary of the Bard's death, tenor Ian Bostridge and Sir Antonio Pappano at the piano performed their hauntingly beautiful rendition of Quilter's Come Away, Death (a setting of text from Twelfth Night.)

This deeply moving, candlelit performance was broadcast live on BBC TWO and live on Cinemas as part on BBC Radio 3 as part of the 'Sounds of Shakespeare' weekend.

The life of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was more than a time of great theatre. It was a period when music flourished, a time of saucy street ballads, of songs to the lute, of consort music and madrigals. The reign of Shakespeare’s monarch Elizabeth I (1558-1603) was seen as a golden age, as an era in which arts like music, painting, poetry and drama flourished as never before. The new 3-CD collection The Sound of Shakespeare celebrates the vibrant music of the age, marking the 400th anniversary of the Bard's death.

One only has to read documents of the period to sense the great love of dances, lute songs and music for instrumental and vocal ensembles. Streets, squares and the theatres themselves rang with the popular ‘Broadside Ballads’ relating everyday events, along with such evergreen melodies as Greensleeves.

At the court of Queen Elizabeth, in the palaces of the nobility and the houses of prosperous commoners, the English enjoyed dances, lute-songs and madrigals by Morley, Dowland and Byrd.  Thanks to great artists of the early music scene, this seemingly distant world comes to pulsating life before us.

The many-faceted collection In the Streets and Theatres of London under the direction of the eminent lutenist Paul O’Dette presents ballads and songs of the period, some by anonymous composers and others from the pen of Shakespeare’s contemporary Thomas Morley.

Real treasures have come down to us from ‘Shakespeare’s lutenist’, in the songs and pieces for lute by court lutenist Robert Johnson – song by ‘Queen of Early Music’ Emma Kirkby with Anthony Rooley. The celebrated Hilliard Ensemble is in attendance with madrigals by Dowland and Byrd – a form that was then at the peak of its perfection.

The Sound of Shakespeare, featuring Paul O'Dette and Emma Kirkby, is out now.

Grammy Award-winners Ian Bostridge and Sir Antonio Pappano have been working together on the stage and in the recording studio for over 20 years. Now they embark on a project marking the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare with a new album out in September. Shakespeare Songs celebrates the four centuries of music and performance that his plays and sonnets have inspired. 

The pair will make an appearance on the BBC’s Shakespeare Live! From the RSC broadcast on Saturday 23 April (BBC Two, Saturday 8.30pm), with a haunting rendition of Roger Quilter’s ‘Come away, Death’. The all-star show honouring the greatest poet and dramatist in the English language will be screened live to cinemas in the UK and Europe. The performance was filmed at a candlelit Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, where Shakespeare is buried.  

‘Come away, Death’, one of the tracks from the new album, will make its exclusive premiere on Record Review (BBC Radio 3, Saturday 9am) the same day and will be immediately available to stream/download from iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer and all other digital platforms. 

Shakespeare’s peerless feeling for the music of the English language has inspired countless composers, from those who set the Bard’s verse during his lifetime to musicians as diverse as Britten, Finzi, Korngold and Stravinsky.  Ian Bostridge and Sir Antonio Pappano, together with four outstanding chamber musicians, delve into the rich Shakespeare legacy for this brand new recording, marking the playwright’s quarter-centenary with a delectable programme of works written for Jacobean productions, Restoration revivals and the modern concert hall. As guests Ian has invited his friends the lutenist Elizabeth Kenny, and for Stravinsky’s Three Songs, flautist Adam Walker, violist Lawrence Power and clarinetist Michael Collins.

“Shakespeare has been a part of my life as a performer from the very start,” says Ian Bostridge, “Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream and Ades's The Tempest have been milestones for me as a singer.

"It has been a great joy to rediscover the music in Shakespeare's incomparable texts and the music that has been written over the past four centuries to clothe them, from the simplest songs of his own contemporaries, through the melodic delights of the likes of Haydn, Britten and Finzi to the matchless complexity of the late Stravinsky. Working again with Tony Pappano has been a joy; and making my first recording with a long term musical partner, lutenist Liz Kenny, a particular pleasure.”

Ian Bostridge and Sir Antonio Pappano will perform Shakespeare Songs at the Wigmore Hall on Monday 14 November.

‘Come away, Death’ is taken from the duo's highly-anticipated forthcoming album, Shakespeare songs (to be released in September).

Also available on Deezer. 

The BBC and the Royal Shakespeare Company have today announced more performers and musical highlights for Shakespeare Live! From The RSC on BBC Two on 23 April.

Among the highlights of this rich feast of music, theatre and poetry will be a haunting rendition of Come Away, Death from British tenor Ian Bostridge, accompanied by Sir Antonio Pappano at the piano. 

The song will be filmed at the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, where Shakespeare is buried. The track will appear on the duo's highly-anticipated forthcoming album, Shakespeare’s songs (to be released in the Autumn), but will be available to stream and download on 23 April only, marking exactly 400 years since the Bard shuffled off this mortal coil.

Shakespeare Live! From The Royal Shakespeare Company will also be screened live to 368 cinemas.

The all-star show honouring the greatest poet and dramatist in the English language will be screened live to cinemas in the UK and Europe by Picturehouse Entertainment and by BBC Worldwide to the USA, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Russia.

Available now for the quatercentenary: The Sound of Shakespeare: authentic music from 16th and 17th-century England, and a collection of sonnets with music, When Love Speaks, featuring such luminaries as the late Alan Rickman, Joseph Fiennes, Rufus Wainwright, and Barbara Bonney.

Released this week, just in time for Valentine's Day: a sumptuous collection of Shakespeare's sonnets in words and music, featuring the voices of Richard Attenborough, Kenneth Branagh, Joseph Finnes, Ralph Fiennes, John Gielgud, John Hurt, Annie Lennox, Rufus Wainwright and Barbara Bonney singing... And the late, lamented Alan Rickman in a elegiac reading of My Mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.

According to the album's producer Michael Kamen, Rickman was enthusiastic about the project and was involved early on.

When Love Speaks is also a celebration of the 400th anniversary of the Bard's death this year.

Love is speaking... Enjoy.

SONNET 130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.