I Heard You Singing: Songs My Father Taught Me
Baritone Jonathan Morton's first solo album is a personal programme of English art song, drawn from cycles and favourites his father once sang around the family piano.
Ralph Vaughan Williams composer
Harold Fraser-Simpson composer
John Ireland composer
Roger Quilter composer
Benjamin Britten composer
Eric Coates composer
Alfred Edward Housman songwriter
Robert Louis Stevenson songwriter
A. A. Milne songwriter
John Masefield songwriter
Alfred, Lord Tennyson songwriter
H. R. Bennett songwriter
Accompanied by David McSkimming, Morton presents Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad, Vaughan Williams's Songs of Travel, Fraser-Simson's settings of A. A. Milne in The Hums of Pooh, and songs by Ireland, Quilter, Britten and Coates.
The recital takes its title from Eric Coates's I Heard You Singing, and its subtitle from the songs Morton absorbed at home while his father returned to the Lieder and English repertoire he had loved at university.
Dad took us camping to remote places where he would set up camp for us and then disappear during the daylight hours. Naturally, I thought these places were chosen to provide the best possible holidays. In fact, they were the homes of the rare species of butterflies that he loved to collect. My sister and I loved him to read to us: The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, the Narnia books. Sometimes we’d play cricket. These were the best times. Or nearly the best. Occasionally, Dad would come swimming. That was the best. He played an excellent shark. He was funny at the pool; he has very delicate English feet and never walks barefoot.
My final year of school, we bought a new house. It was a renovator’s delight. I chose the smallest room in the house, as it overlooked the garden. Mum is very good with gardens and I knew that when it stopped being a bomb site it would look a picture. The room was adjacent to the family room which housed the piano. This was the year Dad decided to get back into the German Lieder and English art song that he had loved at university. So I learnt many new songs while I studied chemistry and maths.
Dad set me an example of intelligence, gentility, humour, patience, humility and kindness. He now lives in the country and loves to read, cook and retreat to the room affectionately named 'the buggery', where he sorts, sets and stores his bugs (mainly lepidoptera).
Reviews
His singing is wonderful and I can highly recommend the disc which I am certain would have widespread appeal.
Artists
Jonathan Morton
Jonathan Morton has a Bachelor of Science in chemistry, is an IT whiz and plays the didgeridoo. He performed with the VSO from 1988 and is a founding member of Pot-Pourri.
David McSkimming
David McSkimming is one of Australia's finest accompanists. He has given recitals with many of the country's most distinguished musicians, and in October 1998, as part of the Melbourne Festival, David McSkimming was the associate artist in recitals with the renowned Korean soprano Sumi Jo and American tenor Gary Lakes.
Tracks
- Loveliest of Trees
- When I was One and Twenty
- Look not in my eyes
- Think no more, lad
- The lads in their hundreds
- Is my team ploughing?
- The Vagabond
- Let Beauty awake
- The Roadside Fire
- Youth and Love
- In Dreams
- The infinite Shining Heavens
- Whither must I wander?
- Bright is the Ring of Words
- I have trod the upward and the downward slope
- Isn't it Funny
- How sweet to be a Cloud
- Cottleston Pie
- The Cheers for Pooh
- The more it snows
- I lay on my chest
- Here lies a tree
- Christopher Robin is going
- Sea Fever John Ireland John Masefield
- Now sleeps the crimson petal Roger Quilter Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- The Foggy, Foggy Dew Benjamin Britten (Traditional)
- I Heard You Singing Eric Coates H. R. Bennett
A Shropshire Lad George Butterworth Alfred Edward Housman
Songs of Travel Ralph Vaughan Williams Robert Louis Stevenson
The Hums of Pooh Harold Fraser-Simpson A. A. Milne
Performers
Composers
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) was an English composer, conductor and pianist. His operas are firmly established in the international repertoire, and more of them are played worldwide than those of any other composer born in the twentieth century.
George Butterworth
George Butterworth (1885–1916) was an English composer best known for his song settings from A Shropshire Lad and the orchestral idyll The Banks of Green Willow.
John Masefield
Kenneth Leighton (2 October 1929 - August 24, 1988) was an English composer and pianist. His compositions include Anglican church music, pieces for choir and piano, concertos, symphonies, chamber music and an opera. He wrote a well-known setting of the Coventry Carol. He was Reid Professor of Music in Edinburgh University.
Roger Quilter
Roger Quilter’s art songs, more than a hundred in number, set Shakespeare, Herrick and Shelley with a clear English lyricism that has kept them in the recital room for generations.
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) was an English composer of nine symphonies, operas, ballets, and a large body of choral and vocal music. Drawing on Tudor polyphony and English folk-song, he helped free British music from its nineteenth-century German models.
Eric Coates
Eric Coates wrote English light music of strong melody and colourful orchestration: suites and marches with foot-tapping rhythm, waltzes such as By the Sleepy Lagoon, and ballads that still appear in song recitals.
Alfred Edward Housman
Alfred Edward Housman's A Shropshire Lad gave English song its most durable pastoral texts: spare, fatalistic lyrics of youth, death and an idealised countryside that composers keep returning to for cycles of art song.
John Ireland
John Ireland wrote English art songs, piano miniatures and sacred choral music in a personal Impressionist vein, closer to Debussy and Ravel than to the folk-song school. His hymn Love Unknown and the carol The Holy Boy remain widely sung.
A. A. Milne
A. A. Milne (1882–1956) was an English writer best known for the Winnie-the-Pooh books and for children’s verse that later entered the song repertoire.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) was an English poet and Poet Laureate whose verse has long been set to music. His lyrics remain among the most frequently chosen texts in the English art-song and choral repertory.
Where to listen
I Heard You Singing: Songs My Father Taught Me is available as a CD. It can be purchased online through Buywell Music or the Australian Music Centre which both offer online ordering.
Product details
- Catalogue number
- MCD 470
- List price
- $25.00 AUD
- Release date
- Aug 2012
- Musical work
copyright - © 2012 Jonathan Morton
- Sound recording
copyright - ℗ 2012 Jonathan Morton
- Category
- Vocal
- Genres
- Vocal & Opera, Romantic & Impressionist
- Barcode
- EAN 9314574047028
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