Though Thomas Hardy is best known as the author of well-known (and for the most part) fatalist novels, he aspired ultimately to be a poet first and foremost, and the poetry is, I think without doubt, a demonstration of his virtuoso abilities in this realm of literary art. Scrutiny of his verse reveals not only those recurring themes of passing time (which is a central focus of this recording, including the poetry about railways, which altered the Victorian sense of time and travel for ever) but also of nature’s obliviousness to humanity. Yet for all its bleakness, which is so palpable in the novels, Hardy does find room for love and his own particular brand of optimism, even though as we know, traumatised by the death of his first (and estranged) wife, Emma, he spent the rest of his life full of remorse at her passing, in spite of his later marriage to Florence Dugdale.

Perhaps most pertinent to the setting of Hardy’s poetry to music, however, is the challenge of his inventive (often irregular) metres and the creative language in which Finzi, for one, rejoiced in ‘The best she could’ and the melancholy ‘Shortening days at the homestead’, deftly arranged by Arthur Keegan for guitar and voice. Gurney’s ‘Bereft’, with his typical limpid lyricism, continues the rather despondent mindset (though I miss the more sustained sound of the piano here), though the reviving tone of Milford’s ‘If it’s ever spring again’ is welcome respite. Among Keegan’s other arrangements, Britten’s ‘At the Railway Station, Upway’ (from Winter Words) and the textural simplicity of Imogen Holst’s ‘Weathers’ are perhaps most effective for guitar accompaniment alone, though I was drawn to Derek Holman’s discerning interpretation of ‘Midnight on the Great Western’, where the addition of string quartet adds a glistening sheen, and a pensive vein to the ‘what if’ sentiment of Muriel Herbert’s ‘Faintheart in a Railway Train’. Kerry Andrew’s ‘The Echo Elf Answers’, commissioned by Keegan for this recording and which is perhaps most typical of Hardy’s poetic ingenuity, conveys something of the poet’s persistent self-accusation, notably in the ostinato of the closing section.

Keegan’s first cycle, Elegies for Emma, embodies a heart-rending poignancy in that it incorporates the haunting voice of Emma herself, and the fluidity of Hardy’s verse is sensitively projected above the numinous sound of the guitar. The framing device of ‘Days to Recollect’, with its varied recapitulation, is a telling one, though just occasionally, while acknowledging the common motivic elements that permeate the songs (especially the persistent semitonal ‘throbbing’), I longed for more gestural contrast. I was also not convinced by ‘Rain on a Grave’, with its somewhat solecistic shift from dissonance to the euphony of quasi-folk song, though the interlude that follows, for recited verse and guitar, is more successful. For me the best of the elegies is ‘The Voice’ (one of Hardy’s most famous utterances), which encapsulates the poet’s contrite obsessions.

Inspired by Hardy’s poem ‘Afterwards’, which dwells not on the afterlife but on what the poet imagined life might be for others after his death, the five movements of Keegan’s String Quartet No 1, Elegies for Tom (which seems more like a suite given the shorter nature of the individual movements), draw their titles from the characteristically time-infatuated poem, added to which the four optional aphoristic interludes for voice respond to the sentiment using words from Philip Larkin’s ‘The Mower’. This work I found less compelling: its literary connections seemed at times rather obscure and difficult to follow, and, though one acknowledges the elegiac ambience of the work (and the elements of chaconne-like cohesion), the unabating ponderous tempos of the quartet and interludes as a whole left one craving divergent relief. The performances of James Girling and the Ligeti Quartet are perceptive and sympathetic; Lotte Betts-Dean, in addition, provides an admirable range of vocal colours and timbres together with excellent, clear diction.