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Track(s) taken from CDA67261/2

If there were dreams to sell

composer
1918
author of text

Lisa Milne (soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)
Recording details: September 1998
Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel, Hampstead, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Arthur Johnson
Engineered by Mike Clements & Mike Hatch
Release date: June 1999
Total duration: 2 minutes 16 seconds
 

Reviews

‘Perhaps these discs will at last bring the best of his songs back into live recital’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘Three excellent young British singers share the treasures recorded here under the sage aegis of Graham Johnson. Lisa Milne's bright, keen soprano is lovely, John Mark Ainsley is a model of style and verbal clarity and young Christopher Maltman continues to show the promise that won him the Cardiff Lieder Prize in 1997’ (The Sunday Times)

‘A welcome, long overdue event. Excellent introduction to unduly neglected repertoire’ (Classic CD)

‘Ireland was a songsmith to rival the finest this country has produced, and Hyperion's generous anthology will hopefully encourage others to explore this rewarding and rapt repertoire’ (Hi-Fi News)
If there were dreams to sell, again from 1918, is a setting of the poem Dream Pedlary by Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849). The dream the poet wishes to buy, to 'heal my ill', is a 'cottage Ione and still'. A complex character, Beddoes trained in medicine but was regarded as too much of a political revolutionary to be allowed to further his career as a university academic. He died by his own hand. Dream Pedlary remains his best-known poetic work, in part thanks to Ireland's direct, straightforward setting featuring a tune that you can start humming from memory as early as the second time around.

from notes by Andrew Green © 1999

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