Album DescriptionWelsh composer Gareth Walters (b. 1928) studied with Jean Rivier and Olivier Messiaen in Paris in the early 1950s, inheriting a formal elegance which has characterized his music ever since, enhanced on this disc by a nocturnal, serenade-like quality. The two song-cycles here--Cân y galon (Song of the Heart), set in Welsh, on aspects of love, and Poésies du soir, evoking the calm of summer evenings--share the songwriting clarity of Benjamin Britten, whose early encouragement galvanized Walters' career as a composer. They enclose the buoyant, Celtic-colored Little Suite for Flute and Harp, the expansive Violin Sonata, and the gentle Berceuse for harp.