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Track(s) taken from CDA66938

Take, O take those lips away

composer
1918
author of text
Measure for Measure IV:i

John Mark Ainsley (tenor), The Nash Ensemble
Recording details: April 1997
Henry Wood Hall, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Antony Howell & Julian Millard
Release date: October 1997
Total duration: 1 minutes 48 seconds

Cover artwork: The Sleeping Shepherd, Morning (1857). Samuel Palmer (1805-1881)
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
 

Other recordings available for download

Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)
John Mark Ainsley (tenor), Roger Vignoles (piano)
Tim Travers-Brown (countertenor), Jeremy Filsell (piano)

Reviews

‘Much of the best of Warlock is here. As usual, Hyperion's presentation is first-rate’ (Gramophone)

‘Superbly evocative’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘Breathtakingly played and sung’ (The Observer)

‘A highly desirable issue. Beautiful sound throughout. Very much recommended’ (Hi-Fi News)

‘A delightful collection’ (Birmingham Post)

‘Another winner from Hyperion’ (Manchester Evening News)
The composer’s real name was Philip Heseltine. It was once fashionable (but is now considered simplistic) to explain away his suicide as a split-personality clash between the critic and scholar Heseltine and the hard-drinking, obstreperous creative genius Warlock. The truth was probably less dramatic: he was a highly emotional figure who felt musically constrained, and enormously frustrated, by being artistically imprisoned within song miniatures, but who lacked the technical ability to express himself in grander structures. Within the field of English song, however, he stands as one of the uncontested masters.

Take, O take those lips away (Shakespeare) is his second setting of those words (1918, the first had been part of his little cycle Saudades, influenced by the wayward chromaticism of the Dutch composer Bernard Van Dieren). The accompaniment suggests the string-quartet layout which is indeed an alternative accompaniment for this song.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2012

Other albums featuring this work

The Frostbound Wood - other songs
SIGCD161Download only
The Power of Love
CDA67888
Warlock: Songs
CDH55442
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