Today’s Video of the Day is brought to us by soprano Carolyn Sampson, baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Joseph Middleton with a performance of Peter Cornelius’s Komm herbei, Tod op 16 no 3. Translated from the Fool’s song (‘Come away, death’) in Twelfth Night, this duet features in a new album entitled Sounds and Sweet Airs – A Shakespeare Songbook.

Musical settings of the bard could almost be considered a genre in of itself spanning from soon after his death to the modern day. From groups of songs, duets and cycles that take us from Gurney and Ireland to Hugo Wolf and Arthur Honegger, via Amy Beach and Rosalind Frances-Hoad – including a song (Sigh no More, Ladies) by Williams himself.

Sounds and Sweet Airs – A Shakespeare Songbook (BIS) was reviewed in the October 2023 Gramophone by Alexandra Coghlan and is available now on CD and digital here.