A unique disc of music for voice, viola and piano, with works contrasting the romance of the old world with the realism and optimism of the new.

Charles Martin Loeffler was a German composer who emigrated to the USA, and this represents the première recording of his Quatre Poèmes, a haunting set of four songs with viola. Copland’s Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson could not be more different. Set after the second world war, they represent a more angular view of nature and the transitory nature of life. Between these two sit Brahms and Bridge, representatives of another age – another world.

Karina Lucas is of Spanish and English parentage and lives in London. She studied at the Royal Northern College of Music and National Opera Studio, supported by Peter Moores Foundation and Glyndebourne Festival Opera. She regularly performs in opera, including Grange Park Opera, the Young Vic Opera Group and Opera North, and in recitals at Purcell Room, Wigmore Hall and St John’s Smith Square.

Rebecca Jones won 2nd prize in the Texaco Young musician of Wales, the Bernard Shore Scholarship and was a prizewinner in the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition. Rebecca has also played principal viola with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the City of London Sinfonia, Camerata Salzburg and Camerata Ireland.

Simon Lane is an acclaimed accompanist, working with instrumentalists and singers such as Allan Clayton, Iestyn Davies, Peter Harvey, Katherine Manley, Guy Johnston, Jack Liebeck, Philip Higham, Gemma Rosefield and Katie Stillman. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester with Mark Ray and Dina Parakhina, subsequently graduating with Distinction from the Royal Academy of Music in London, where his teachers were Michael Dussek and Julius Drake.