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Track(s) taken from CDA67337

Hypochondriacus

First line:
By myself walking
composer
Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1889-1960)
1949
author of text
Charles Lamb (1775-1834)
from Rosamund Gray, 1859

Stephen Varcoe (baritone), Roger Vignoles (piano)
Recording details: March 2002
All Saints' Church, East Finchley, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Julian Millard
Release date: February 2003
Total duration: 1 minutes 14 seconds
 

Other recordings available for download

Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)

Reviews

‘Songs which gain in stature through being presented in sequence and superbly done’ (Gramophone)

‘Two superb voices alive to Gibbs’s many moods, while Roger Vignoles accompaniments are a model of sensitivity and understanding’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘Geraldine McGreevy and Stephen Varcoe are persuasive advocates … Roger Vignoles is the ideal accompanist, adding to the atmosphere of each song’ (The Guardian)

‘Most of these songs I had not heard before, nor, I suspect, have most listeners. Hyperion must be thanked for making them available’ (International Record Review)

‘Lyrical, imaginative … Geraldine McGreevy’s soprano voice is sweet and pure’ (Classic FM Magazine)

‘Stephen Varcoe sings with typical sensitivity … Roger Vignoles offers shapely, perfectly-scaled accompaniments’ (Yorkshire Post)

«Ces mélodies sont exquises sans être précieuses. La sensibilité est fine, l’expression nuancée mais sans artifice» (Monde de La Musique)
Hypochondriacus (1949) is a setting of a most unusual poem by Charles Lamb (1775–1834) from his collection Rosamund Gray (1859). The author was notoriously unmusical himself, amusingly so, and a setting of his words is an extreme rarity. To fully savour the piquancy of this anguished misanthropy readers should acquaint themselves with Lamb’s far more famous prose style and his Essays of Elia. Cecil Armstrong Gibbs turns this outburst of spleen into a virtuoso patter song and a musical scherzo. It reminds us that pessimism and black humour are English qualities too, and not only the province of the Scandinavians and Russians.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2012

Other albums featuring this work

The Power of Love
Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)
CDA67888

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