As a violinist whose mother was an artist, combining these two art forms has been a passion throughout my career. Collecting cards of Le Violon Rouge by Dufy, Pougny and others, inspired the title of my eclectic festival celebrating the violin across the arts, The Red Violin (before the film of the same name), held throughout Cardiff in 1997 with Founder Patron Lord Menuhin, and in 2007 when we exhibited children’s own paintings of red violins throughout the Wales Millennium Centre. In our increasingly visual and transient world, the flash of an image has become ever more important. Album covers provide an opportunity to display art by contemporary and other artists and to pair suitable and fine images with the music they are promoting. I’ve been interested to research paintings for the covers of my albums, both solo and for my London Chamber Ensemble.
My latest album, released 15 May, is ‘Charles Wood String Quartets’ (SOMM). Following the success of ‘Howells & Wood Quartets’ 2024, we were invited to record more quartets by Charles Wood (1866-1926) to be released in the year of the centenary of his death. Wood taught Howells as well as Vaughan Williams, Bliss and Tippett and deserves to be better known for his string quartets which are out of print and unrecorded. The music is romantic, tonal, finely crafted and infused with Irish folk tunes harking back to his Armagh roots. I found a beautiful painting by the Irish artist Sinéad Smyth – ‘Moonlight falling and fairy thorn’, contacted her direct and she was delighted to let us have this to use this for the latest cover. I enjoy being hands-on with the design and layout and like the classic Gil Sans font.
While preparing the London Chamber Ensemble’s album, Howells & Wood Quartets, I researched the history of Herbert Howells’ In Gloucestershire. The story is legendary: Howells famously lost the original 1916 manuscript on a train. Though he reconstructed the work from memory a few years later, the original manuscript parts only recently came to light. Once discovered, they were offered to my quartet for this recording. I was thrilled to find this painting by Harold Gilman ‘In Gloucestershire’, remarkably from the same year, 1916. One has, of course, to be mindful of artists‘ rights. With the record company SOMM, we paid for the rights to use this on the cover. “Chosen” Tune refers to Chosen Hill, near Howells’ birthplace in Gloucester.
After my mother died in 2020 I found a pile of unframed, undated paintings, one of which featured elements of string instruments in an almost surreal style. Naxos were very happy to have this on the cover of my ‘Violin Conversations’ – named after Thea Musgrave’s ‘Colloquy’ and reflecting the interesting conversations I’ve had with these living composers, often friends, some of them pianists with whom I’ve collaborated on the recording as well.
In 2018, I put together Grace Williams Chamber Music (Naxos), with my London Chamber Ensemble, supported by the British Music Society, featuring pieces from 1 to 9 players, all first recordings. I was pleased to find a striking painting by a living artist of the docks in Barry, the home of the composer. There’s a lot of passion in the music by this Welsh student of Vaughan Williams mirrored by this dramatic image. Alan Bickley was delighted to have his painting featured and in fact won a small prize from the magazine ‘The Artist’ which featured his cover painting. I was amazed that this album of little known music entered the Classical Charts at no.2!
For the first album in 2005, of 8 pieces written for me for violin and piano, including music by Nyman and MacMillan, I was able to use a contemporary painting dedicated to me by Gerald Marks (1921-2017) – ‘The Madeleine Series’ no.7 1990. The artist said he was inspired by the passion in my playing and his work also reflects the rugged terrain and light of southern France where he worked. The abstract expressionist nature of this beautiful (6’x6′) painting in acrylic on cotton duck goes well with the variety of new musical works. One of the pieces, by Anthony Powers gave rise to the title – In Sunlight: Pieces for Madeleine Mitchell (NMC).
The next project grew out of a request from the William Alwyn Foundation to direct and assemble musicians for a significant album for Naxos of his Chamber Music and Songs (2007), mostly first recordings. One of the works was ‘Three Winter Poems’ for string quartet (which my London Chamber Ensemble Quartet is playing at the English Music Festival 23.5), and I have in my possession a Suffolk winter landscape by the water colourist Edward Vulliamy (Fellow at Cambridge University, where Alwyn’s archive is kept), which was perfect because William Alwyn lived in Suffolk.
There are some very collectible album covers, especially in the days of vinyl with The Beatles and Sir Peter Blake. My hope is that, although fewer people are buying physical CDs, the online presence very much promotes the artists whose art is represented on these covers, so it’s a nice synergy for musicians and visual artists.
The new album of Charles Wood String Quartets with the London Chamber Ensemble Quartet is out on 15 May on the SOMM label: listn.fm/woodstringquartets