Mark Padmore (tenor), Morgan Szymanski (guitar) (A Road Less Travelled); Martha McLorinan (mezzo-soprano), Sacconi Quartet [Ben Hancox and Hannah Dawson (violins), Robin Ashwell (viola), Cara Berridge (cello)] (The Garden Path), Hugo Hymas (tenor) with Nicholas Daniel (oboe) (Other Earths and Skies)

Alec Roth
A Road Less Travelled (2017)
The Garden Path (2013, rev. 2022)
Other Earths and Skies (2010, rev. 2022)

Signum Classics SIGCD971 [61’12”] English texts included
Producer Adrian Peacock Engineer David Hinnitt

Recorded 6,8 & 10 October 2025 at Church of St Anne and St Agnes, Gresham Street, City of London

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Signum Classics resumes its coverage of Alec Roth (b.1948) with this album of song-cycles, their scoring with guitar, string quartet or oboe confirming the versatility of the composer’s idiom and enabling each to be enjoyed on its own terms or as part of the overall programme.

What’s the music like?

Best known for larger-scale choral works (though his string quartets – recorded by the Allegri Quartet on RTF Classical NI6321 – are well worth anyone’s investigation), Roth has produced a number of song-cycles whose accompaniment can be as crucial as the words in determining the overall expressive trajectory. Each of these works has notable British precedents – Britten or Walton with guitar, Gurney or Vaughan Williams with string quartet, then VW again with oboe – though, in terms of his fashioning a personal response, Roth is definitely his own man.

Performable with guitar and/or string quartet (the former chosen here), A Road Less Travelled sets (whole or in part) 12 poems by Edward Thomas – though the title is actually the title of a poem by Robert Frost, the American poet who had encouraged Thomas to develop his poetic muse. Pivoting around an instrumental Interlude, the settings in this ‘solo cantata’ are mainly brief while strongly evocative of a mood shared by all these texts; namely, the journey itself as more lastingly significant than the destination indicated, or at least implied, over its course.

The ‘song-cycle’ that is The Garden Path utilizes four poems by Amy Lowell and started out with piano accompaniment before being revised with string quartet. Here it is those parallels between her garden, which the poet describes in its myriad states and variety, and the human condition which come to the fore in these four relatively lengthy settings; alongside a feeling of what may lie beyond such luxuriance and abundance for the protagonist, as for the reader. That such ambiguity emerges so candidly yet obliquely is integral to this cycle’s fascination.

Finally to Other Earth and Skies – these ‘five miniatures’ after eighth-century Chinese poet Li Bai (once known as Li Tai-po) having been translated by Vikram Seeth, an author with whom Roth has collaborated on numerous occasions. It is the haiku-like brevity and concentration of the texts as sets the tone for this sequence, with its interplay between all-too-human emotions and metaphysical longing in which any vestige of ego has been subsumed into the numinous. Quite likely the deepest such cycle featured on this album, and certainly the most intriguing.

Does it all work?

Pretty much throughout. As an adherent of the ‘less is more’ ethos, Roth’s settings are almost consistently spare in texture and restrained in manner; their meaning arising out of the actual words as much as from any poetic gloss. Demonstrably yet never stereotypically tonal, while often teasing as to their emotional remit, this is song-writing of a high order and as pleasurable for the listeners as they are manifestly are for the singers and instrumentalists featured herein. All the texts are included, though there is never any problem with hearing what is being sung.

Is it recommended?

Indeed it is. The church acoustic is evidently an ideal ambience for recording such music, and those who respond to it should investigate earlier releases of Roth on this label – most notably the vocal miscellanies Songs in Time of War (SIGCD124) or Sometime I Sing (SIGCD332).

Listen / Buy

You can listen to excerpts and explore purchase options at the Signum Records website. Click on the names to read more about composer Alec Roth, and the performers Mark Padmore, Martha McLorinan, Hugo Hymas, Morgan Szymanski, Nicholas Daniel and the Sacconi Quartet

Published post no.2,893 – Wednesday 20 May 2026