Stone Records presents two of the UK’s finest musicians, Roderick Williams (baritone) and Sioned Williams (harp), in a superb performance of Michael Stimpson’s Dylan, a biographical song cycle of Wales’s most renowned poet, Dylan Thomas. Through his own wonderful texts and poems, Dylan’s life is traced from his childhood in Wales, through his fiery marriage to Caitlin and love of alcohol (Bottled God), to his untimely death in New York in 1953.

Dylan is paired with The Drowning of Capel Celyn (Boddi Capel Celyn) for solo harp, a work Sioned commissioned from Michael to mark her 60th birthday. Capel Celyn, a village near Bala in North Wales, was flooded in 1965 to create a reservoir for Liverpool. People were devastated as the water rushed into the valley, drowning the Chapel, Quaker Meeting House, Post Office, and a number of cottages. Set in five movements, the work evokes Capel Celyn in first light, the marching protesters and the violence of the flooding. ‘In my mind, gradually the waves subside and the waters soften - bubbles stream, fish glide, and towards the end are the first signs of sadness before a fond farewell.’