Hyperion Records

Although spectacular musical productions of Shakespeare declined in popularity after about 1710, when Italian opera began to dominate the London theatrical scene, composers continued to set his lyrics for concert or domestic use. Richard Leveridge’s setting of famous words from Love’s Labour’s Lost is a case in point: it combines into a single strophic song the matching lyrics ‘When daisies pied and violets blue’ and ‘When icicles hang by the wall’, sung in the play by Spring and Winter respectively.

from notes by Peter Holman © 2004