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Track(s) taken from CDA67227

The hardy Norse-woman, Op 365

First line:
There was a young lady from Norway
composer
Karel Drofnatski (1852-1924)
composer
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)
author of text
Edward Lear (1812-1888)

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: 0 minutes 54 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)
Unknown to Greene, Stanford had committed his ‘Limericks’ to paper on two occasions. Both manuscripts survive, the revised version of which (now in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York) was discovered among the bomb-damaged archives of Stainer & Bell and used as the source for publication in 1960. The first of Lear’s rhymes to appear in the collection of fourteen in total was The Hardy Norse-woman (Op 365) which, marked ‘Allegro griegoso’, comically mimics Peer Gynt, which is also evident from the comments the composer appended at the end:

The composer shows, almost too clearly, his close acquaintanceship with the modern Scandinavian school. He explains however that he was anxious to illustrate with appropriate local colour an incident which took place at the première of one of Ibsen’s dramas. The young lady suffered physically from a front place which she secured in the gallery queue. She proved however by her courageous mental superiority under adverse circumstances, that she had no sympathy with the pessimism of the great playwright of her country; taking rather as her motto the view of Alfred de Musset, “Il faut qu’une porte soit ouverte ou fermée.”

from notes by Jeremy Dibble © 2001

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