’TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863) written in 1823. Moore was an American Professor of Oriental and Greek Literature, as well as Divinity and Biblical Learning, at the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in New York City. Located on land donated by the “Bard of Chelsea” himself, the seminary…
One of the first CD booklets I wrote was at the behest of the late lamented Ted Perry. It was for volume 1 of a new series on his Hyperion label called The Romantic Piano Concerto (Piers Lane playing Moszkowski’s and Paderewski’s concertos). That was in 1991. I have written several others for Hyperion in…
SUMMER IS ICUMEN IN Medieval (Middle English) lyrics (c.1250) Svmer is icumen in Lhude sing cuccu! Groweþ sed and bloweþ med and springþ þe wde nu. Sing cuccu! Awe bleteþ after lomb, lhouþ after calue cu, Bulluc sterteþ, bucke uerteþ. Murie sing cuccu! Cuccu, cuccu, Wel singes þu cuccu. ne swik þu nauer nu!…
THOMAS MOORE (1779-1852) Thomas Moore was an Irish poet, singer, songwriter, and entertainer, now best remembered for the lyrics of The Minstrel Boy and The Last Rose of Summer. He was responsible, with John Murray, for burning Lord Byron’s memoirs after his death Oh! Ever Thus, From Childhood’s Hour Oh! ever thus, from childhood’s hour,…
Don at my 60th birthday party Another nonagenarian actor friend has passed away. I first saw Donald Sinden when I was a schoolboy. He was playing York in the Wars of the Roses at Stratford for the RSC. I didn’t meet him until 25 years later when I was playing Lord Goring in a production…
Puttin’ On The Ritz Irving Berlin Berlin wrote these ingeniously syncopated lyrics as a stand-alone song in 1927 (published 1929). It was recorded, most famously, by Fred Astaire (see the parody, below, in which he is mentioned) in 1930. When the song was used in the 1946 film ‘Blue Skies’, Berlin rewrote the lyrics changing…
I was shocked to hear that Dora Bryan had died. I suppose I shouldn’t have been because when I worked with her in 1974/75 she was then in her early fifties. She looked a good ten years younger, amazingly spry and youthful, ready to do a high-kick at the drop of a hat. ‘Dora Bryan dies…
THE STORY OF HIAWATHA Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1855) Longfellow’s epic poem, written in trochaic tetrameter, has been much parodied. It begins thus: Should you ask me, whence these stories? Whence these legends and traditions, With the odors of the forest With the dew and damp of meadows, With the curling smoke of wigwams, With the…
Felicia Hemans (1793-1835) makes her second appearance in this series having already given us ‘Casabianca’ (‘The boy stood on the buring deck’). This poem of hers is now only famous because of Noel Coward’s superb parody but Hemans’s verse has the distinction of being the source of our use of the phrase ‘stately home’. The…
KHATIA BUNIATISHVILI at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, 4 June 2014 The Georgian pianist, now 26, is, let us say, very pleasing to the eye. Last night she gave us a shimmering, figure-hugging, full-length silver gown. With that mop of black hair and trademark carmine lips, Khatia Buniatishvili cuts a charismatic figure. You can’t teach stage…