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Track(s) taken from CDA67374

Water o' Tyne

First line:
I canna get to my love, if I would dee
composer
The Bishoprick Garland, County Durham, 1834, or earlier
author of text
The Bishoprick Garland, County Durham, 1834, or earlier

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: 1 minutes 33 seconds

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

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)
Besides songs designed for general currency, dialect songs with primarily local interest were always popular in the drawing-room. Few such bodies of songs are of richer quality than those of Tyneside, containing such classics as ‘The Blaydon Races’, ‘Blow the wind southerly’ and ‘Bobby Shaftoe’. In ‘The Water o’ Tyne’ the singer awaits a ferryman to take him to his beloved across the river that separates County Durham from Northumberland. The song’s origins go back at least as far as The Bishoprick Garland, an 1834 collection of songs of County Durham.

from notes by Andrew Lamb © 2003

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