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Track(s) taken from CDA66920

An old song re-sung

First line:
I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing, a-sailing
composer
1918
author of text

Robert White (tenor), Samuel Sanders (piano)
Recording details: July 1996
All Saints' Church, East Finchley, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Julian Millard
Release date: April 1997
Total duration: 1 minutes 43 seconds
 

Reviews

‘This is a very charming record’ (Gramophone)

‘A delightful, imaginatively wide-ranging anthology. A most enjoyable entertainment as well as a true voyage of discovery’ (Hi-Fi News)

‘I felt as if I was discovering these songs for the first time’ (Soundscapes, Australia)
Though he died at the age of thirty-six in 1920, Charles Tomlinson Griffes’ works have retained an important place in American music. Griffes was an early user of impressionism and exoticism in his music. An Old Song Re-sung, the first of Two Songs by John Masefield (1918), is a strikingly powerful piece. After a highly energetic introduction depicting a ship in full and dramatic sail, Griffes abandons the sea-shanty element of the song, gradually revealing the lurking sense of menace that finally surrounds the eerie chinking of broken glass at the end as the vessel sinks ‘among the wrecks’. For me there is a touch of the same dread in this piece that I feel whenever I hear Wagner’s overture to The Flying Dutchman.

from notes by Robert White © 1997

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