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Track(s) taken from CDA67374

The Green Hills o' Somerset

First line:
Oh the green hills o’ Somerset
composer
1916
author of text

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: 2 minutes 28 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)
Eric Coates set several lyrics by Frederic Edward Weatherly, who was a barrister as well as one of the most prolific and successful writers of ballad lyrics. Coates recalled how, as a young man, he sought a lyric from Weatherly and visited him at his London residence in Woburn Place: “He was one of the smallest men I had met and, for such a remarkably gifted man, strangely enough, was the possessor of a small head … I noticed on his desk two piles of papers, the one on the right looked like lyrics and the one on his left had the appearance of legal documents. I was right in both cases, for during the conversation which followed he told me he wrote poems while working out difficult problems of law”.

from notes by Andrew Lamb © 2003

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