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Hannah Holman violoncello

Michelle Alvarado piano

Sonya Cassidy narrator

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This recording project honors the lives and work of groundbreaking British authors and social reformers Vera Brittain (1893-1970) and Winifred Holtby (1898-1935). A nurse during WWI, Brittain was also the only woman to chronicle the Great War in depth.

 

Working near the front lines, Brittain witnessed the devastation of war while caring for both British and German soldiers. Among others, she lost her only brother, a fiancé, and later, her grief-stricken father. Brittain wrote with searing passion about her life-changing experiences, and she eventually became a devoted pacifist.  

 

In her 1933 memoir Testament of Youth, Brittain reflected on the "post-war frenzy for memorials—as though we could somehow compensate the dead." But there was no restitution for a generation lost. She wrote of the "stone architecture" that covered the "soil that held so much agony," lamenting, "Only the sandhills and the sea remained unchanged." 

Like Brittain, Winifred Holtby, campaigned for peace and women's rights. She is also remembered for her interwar work in segregated South Africa. Holtby advocated for the unionization of Black workers through the Industrial & Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU). Moreover, in 1934 she established the Society of Friends of Africa providing funding, grants, and sponsorship for native people. In 1940, the Winifred Holtby Memorial Library was built in Johannesburg in her honor. The first library of its kind in South Africa, it was ‘equipped solely for the use of non-Europeans...and intended to serve native women as well as men.’ Holtby’s landmark feminist novel, South Riding, was published in 1936.

As activists, Brittain and Holtby campaigned together tirelessly with Brittain summing up their work in three words: “peace, justice, compassion.” Their collective message was a cautionary tale, informed by a keen understanding of the horrors of war, and an unwavering desire to promote gender and racial equality.

Each musical movement contemplates the loss, heartbreak, and isolation, as well as the courage, perseverance, and ambition, experienced by the authors. Brittain and Holtby’s powerful words are woven throughout the musical passages, which are alternately hopeful and ascending, and mournful and anguished.

The program opens with an homage to Holtby titled No Mourning By Request, and it concludes with Epilogue: Immortal Flower, a peaceful thought of eternity. The five-movement work Between the Sandhills and the Sea, focuses on Brittain's experiences during WWI. 

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This project was first presented in 2021 on a tour of the American Midwest, including a performance at the stunning Voxman Music Hall in Iowa City.  "Movement I: Time" premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2018. ​

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There are upcoming UK performances at the JdP Building, St. Hilda's College, University of Oxford and at The Laidlaw Music Centre, University of St. Andrews  featuring Hannah Holman (cello) and Katherine Miller (piano). SPECIAL GUEST narrator TBA soon! 

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Credits: 
 

All music by Eric Starr, except “L’Envoi” by Edward Brittain. Poetry by Winifred Holtby, Vera Brittain, and W.E. Henley. Music recorded at Gurari Studios at The National Opera Center, NYC. Poems recorded at Another Tongue, London. Music recorded, mixed, and mastered by Jeremy Gerard. Cover Art (oil on gesso board) by Amanda Besl. Produced by Eric Starr and Delia Starr.

 

Texts by Vera Brittain are © The Literary Executors of the Vera Brittain Will Trust (1970) and are reproduced with permission.

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This recording is intended to be enjoyed in sequence.

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Total Running Time: 58 min. 40 secs

UPC Code: 198004851350

Bronx Bound Records © 2022

Media Press kits are available upon request (ericstarr1@gmail.com). 

Available at Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, Pandora, and more. 

 

To purchase collector's edition Digipak CDs ($15 USD) contact: eric@ericstarrmusic.com  ​​​