Lotte Betts-Dean’s new album

August 9, 2023

Lotte Betts-Dean

Lotte Betts-Dean’s new album with Stuart MacRae has been featured by Presto Music as one of the Editor’s Picks for July 2023. Katherine Cooper described the disc as “starkly beautiful” in the July Editor’s Pick.

The record has also been given a five-star review by The Scotsman. “The results are enchanting, characterfully revealed in the album Earth, Thy Cold Is Keen”

From Delphian:

“In 2021, Stuart MacRae heard a recorded performance by mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean of The Lif of this World, his 2008 setting of an anonymous Middle English lyric. Entranced by the way she shaped its phrases and ornamentation, he immediately began to conceive new works for her voice, solo or lightly accompanied, as well as to bring to completion several other works-in-progress.

“This extraordinary flurry of activity – eight vocal works completed in less than two years – is captured here, and reveals the extent to which MacRae’s recent music has expanded to embrace folk-like simplicity alongside the modernist techniques of his earlier work. Similar qualities are found in two works for the violin-and-cello duo Sequoia, while MacRae himself appears on harmonium and contributes electronics to two of the vocal solos.”

Australian mezzo soprano Lotte Betts-Dean is a versatile and dynamic concert artist, whose performance experience encompasses opera, oratorio, contemporary music, art song recital/chamber music, early music and non-classical collaborations. She has been based in London since 2014 and works internationally, most often in the UK and Australia.