A Charm of Lullabies

'A Charm of Lullabies' was written in December 1947 for the mezzo-soprano Nancy Evans. Britten was keen to provide the singer with a work for her recital programmes, and was helped in the choice of texts by Evans’ husband Eric Crozier, who had recently written the libretto for Albert Herring.

The work brings together an anthology of diverse texts unified by the themes of night and sleep and is one of the most welcoming and uncomplicated of Britten’s song-cycles.

This new arrangement presented in the Hawkes Pocket Score Series differs from the original piano version in several respects, in particular by expanding it to give it the extra dimension needed for an orchestral song-cycle, and by joining the first three songs, and the fourth and fifth, in effect presenting the cycle in two parts.