Ivor Gurney was a poet as well as a composer and was accomplished in a number of musical genres including song. With his intuitive approach to poetry he selected texts widely, from contemporaries to ballads, Elizabethan and Jacobean poets, and even set his own lyrics. This wide-ranging selection includes his masterpieces – among them Sleep and Severn Meadows – with several songs heard in their first recording. Marcus Farnsworth, First Prize winner in the 2009 Wigmore Hall International Song Competition, has been praised for his ‘superbly controlled baritone voice’ (Fanfare). This album is Volume 24 in The English Song Series on Naxos.