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Track(s) taken from CDA67374

Mother Machree

First line:
There’s a spot in me heart which no colleen may own
composer
1910
composer
1910
author of text

Sir Thomas Allen (baritone), Malcolm Martineau (piano)
Recording details: January 2002
Champs Hill, West Sussex, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Julian Millard
Release date: June 2003
Total duration: 2 minutes 22 seconds

Cover artwork: At the Piano. Robert Beyschlag (1838-1903)
Anthony Mitchell Paintings, Nottingham / Fine Art Photographic Library, London
 

Other recordings available for download

Dame Ann Murray (mezzo-soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)

Reviews

‘Other singers over recent decades have given the songs an airing from time to time, but Thomas Allen is the very man to do it’ (Gramophone)

‘With piano-playing by that most sensitive of accompanists, Malcolm Martineau, Sir Thomas Allen brings high art to these songs … with an affectionate regard to mood and feeling, and with a touching lyrical sincerity’ (The Daily Telegraph)

‘A fitting tribute to this repertory that one of the finest operatic voices of our day has chosen to record it’ (Classic FM Magazine)

‘I must confess that, what with the beauty of Thomas Allen’s voice and the lovely accompaniment of Malcolm Martineau at the piano, a tear welled in my eye more than once. Another distinguished release from Hyperion’ (Liverpool Daily Post)

‘Hyperion here brings us Sir Thomas Allen caressing 29 well-loved parlour songs with his warm, expressive baritone … Malcolm Martineau provides his usual sympathetic and well-etched pianistic support’ (Birmingham Post)

‘Wwhat quality of nostalgia, and what depth of conviction … superb performances … Martineau’s carefully moulded accompaniments enhance a glorious enterprise’ (Yorkshire Post)
That Irish songs flourished not only on the European side of the Atlantic but also the American was due especially to the tenor Chauncey Olcott. Like his contemporary Eugene Stratton, Olcott was born in Buffalo, was educated by the Christian Brothers, and became a performer with Haverly’s Mastodon Minstrels. Whereas Stratton settled as a black-face performer in Britain, Olcott (who was brought up by his Irish-born mother after his father’s early death) became the archetypal American Irishman, writing and performing sentimental songs evoking Ireland and its people. These included ‘My wild Irish rose’ (1899) and ‘When Irish eyes are smiling’ (1912), as well as ‘Mother Machree’. He introduced this last in a romantic drama Barry of Ballymore by Rida Johnson Young, a former actress who had been Victor Herbert’s librettist on Naughty Marietta. Olcott’s musical collaborator was Ernest R Ball, a vaudeville pianist who was staff arranger for the Witmark publishing company.

from notes by Andrew Lamb © 2003

Other albums featuring this work

The last rose of summer
CDH55210Download only
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