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Track(s) taken from CDA67227

My heart is like a singing bird

composer
1909
author of text
1862; A birthday from Goblin Market and other poems

Lynne Dawson (soprano), Malcolm Martineau (piano)
Recording details: August 2000
Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel, Hampstead, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Antony Howell & Julian Millard
Release date: May 2001
Total duration: 1 minutes 50 seconds
 

Reviews

‘A top British soprano shines in a recital that should appeal well beyond her shores. The programme is delightful, and so are the performances’ (Gramophone)

‘The programme is well chosen, with familiar songs alongside some that have been unjustly neglected. Dawson’s performances are wholly intelligent, nicely phrased and display deep musical understanding: her account of Howells’s King David is particularly mesmerizing. She is most fortunate to have Malcolm Martineau as her accompanist: he is one of the finest currently before the public, and they are rewarded with an excellent, beautifully balanced recording … this recital will give much pleasure’ (International Record Review)

‘Taken with the unusual repertory and Lynne Dawson’s unusually fine singing, this becomes an easily recommended introduction to the world of English song’ (American Record Guide)

‘The most delectable recital of English song … a generous sequence of brief, tuneful songs that are totally charming, from Armida's Garden by Parry to Ivor Gurney's rapt setting of John Fletcher’ (The Guardian)

‘A rare and rich recital … the real joy of this recital is to hear Dawson's soprano thrilling to the expressive flexibility of her own language, particularly where the glorification of the voice is fused with linguistic excitement’ (The Times)

‘What a treat it is to hear [Dawson] singing English so expressively … Nothing is lovelier than her haunting unaccompanied singing of Vaughan Williams’ (The Sunday Times)

‘The really marvellous thing about the singing is that it captures a bubbly, warm, human individuality – a kind of vocal English rose’ (Manchester Evening News)
My heart is like a singing bird, a setting of Christina Rossetti’s poem ‘A birthday’ from Goblin Market and other Poems (1862), appeared in Set X, though not published until 1918. The collection dates, however, from 1909 when it was sung at Bechstein Hall on 16 November by Agnes Hamilton Harty (née Nicholls), its dedicatee. An impassioned love song, in much the same tradition as Parry’s other high-class drawing-room creations (such as When comes my Gwen from volume six), My heart is like a singing bird imparts a sense of nervous exhilaration as the singer awaits the arrival of her beloved.

from notes by Jeremy Dibble © 2001

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