EMR CD082–83 | DETAILS
  EMR CD082–83
   
 

ENCHANTED PLACES
THE COMPLETE FRASER-SIMPSON SETTINGS OF A.A. MILNE
   
  Grant Doyle (bar.) | John Kember (pf.)
Brian Sibley (narr.)
   
  EAN 5 060263 500773

A.A. Milne’s much-loved verses and stories about his son Christopher Robin and his bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, first appeared in the mid-1920s in a quartet of slim volumes: ‘When We Were Very Young’, ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’, ‘Now We Are Six’ and ‘The House at Pooh Corner’. Memorably accompanied by delightful drawings from illustrator E.H. Shepard, the books quickly achieved huge popularity in Britain and the USA and today, almost a hundred years on, are now known and adored in translation all over the world.

 

What is less well-known is that the popular composer of light music Harold Fraser-Simson (best known for the stage show ‘The Maid of the Mountains’) wrote enchanting settings for many of Milne’s funny and clever rhymes and all of Winnie-the-Pooh’s idiosyncratic “Hums” that are such an important part of Pooh’s character and feature in almost every one of his adventures. A few of these songs have survived as childhood favourites (‘They’re Changing Guard at Buckingham Palace’ and ‘Hush, Hush, Whisper Who Dares’) but the majority of the songs have been largely forgotten.

 

This recording by baritone Grant Doyle and pianist John Kember brings together, for the very first time in one collection, all 67 of Harold Fraser-Simson’s beautifully crafted settings for A.A. Milne’s verses. Milne’s introduction to ‘The King’s Breakfast’ on Disc 2 is read by author, presenter and Winnie-the-Pooh authority Brian Sibley, who also provides the liner notes illustrated with Milne family photos from his personal collection.

 

These charming songs, along with Pooh’s nonsense “Hums”, capture the innocence of childhood and evoke an idyll of England at peace in the fragile years immediately following the First World War. Their very timelessness makes them deserving of a new audience of listeners of all ages.

TRACK LISTING AND AUDIO EXTRACTS
     

CD1
 
Music by Harold Fraser-Simson (1872–1944)
Words by Alan Alexander Milne (1882–1956)
CHRISTOPHER ROBIN SONGS
1. ‘Halfway Down the Stairs  
2. ‘The Friend’  
3. ‘Independence’  
4. ‘Brownie’  
5. ‘Us Two’  
6. ‘Binker’  
7. ‘Forgiven’  
 
THE COMPLETE HUMS OF POOH
8. ‘Isn’t It Funny’    
9. ‘How Sweet to Be a Cloud’  
10. ‘It’s Very, Very Funny’    
11. ‘Cottleston Pie’  
12. ‘Lines Written by a Bear of Very Little Brain’  
13. ‘Sing Ho! For the Life of a Bear’    
14. ‘They All Went Off to Discover the Pole’    
15. ‘Three Cheers for Pooh’  
16. ‘The More It Snows’  
17. ‘What Shall We Do about Poor Little Tigger?’  
18. ‘I Could Spend a Happy Morning’  
19. ‘Oh! The Butterflies Are Flying’  
20. ‘If Rabbit Were Bigger’  
21. ‘This Warm and Sunny Spot’    
22. ‘I Lay On My Chest’  
23. ‘Here Lies a Tree’  
24. ‘Christopher Robin Is Going’  
 
STORIES
25. ‘Knights and Ladies’  
26. ‘Bad Sir Brian Botany’  
27. ‘Wind on the Hill’  
28. ‘Spring Morning’  
29. ‘Disobedience’  
 
MORE CHRISTOPHER ROBIN SONGS
30. ‘Lines and Squares’  
31. ‘Down by the Pond’  
32. ‘Puppy and I’  
33. ‘Before Tea’  
34. ‘The Christening’  
35. ‘Sneezles’  
36. ‘Cherry Stones’    
37. ‘The End’    
38. ‘Politeness’    
39. ‘Vespers’  
40. ‘In the Dark’  
       

CD2
       
YET MORE CHRISTOPHER ROBIN SONGS
1. ‘If I Were King’  
2. ‘At the Zoo’  
3. ‘Buckingham Palace’  
4. ‘Missing’  
5. ‘Happiness’    
6. ‘The Engineer’    
7. ‘Market Square’  
8. ‘The Alchemist’  
9. ‘Nursery Chairs’  
10. ‘The Three Foxes’  
11. ‘Daffodowndilly’    
12. ‘Cradle Song’  
13. ‘Furry Bear’  
14. ‘Jonathon Jo’    
15. ‘Waiting at the Window’  
16. ‘In the Fashion’    
17. ‘Hoppity’    
18. ‘Growing Up’    
19. ‘Sand-Between-The-Toes’  
20. ‘Teddy Bear’  
21. ‘Twice Times’  
22. ‘Shoes and Stockings’  
23. ‘The Emperor’s Rhyme’  
24. ‘Rice Pudding’  
25. ‘The Four Friends’  
 
‘THE KING’S BREAKFAST
26. Introduction to ‘The King’s Breakfast’    
27. ‘Feed my Cow’  
28. Introduction (cont’d)    
29. ‘The King’s Breakfast’  

 

REVIEWS
Beautifully shaped by Benjamin Frith... Beguiling sounds, graced by the tawny richness and unexaggerated line of Richard Jenkinson’s cello playing... The sense of purpose and sureness of line of Ian Venables’ music is pure oxygen.
EMR CD31 | BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Exquisitely rewarding... Ravishing accounts.
EMR CD029 | CHOIR AND ORGAN
This is music of great beauty and integrity and the performances fully do it justice. It would be criminal to let it pass you by.

EMR CD028 | INTERNATIONAL
RECORD REVIEW

The Bridge Quartet approach these pieces with a sympathetic and insightful warmth, and confirm their ambassadorial credentials for British chamber music. A lovely, radiant disc.
EMR CD025 | Gramophone
Duncan Honeybourne’s playing is astonishingly affectionate, yet never saccharine... Honeybourne plays with suave confidence.
EMR CD024 | INTERNATIONAL PIANO
Rupert Marshall-Luck is an ideal interpreter: generously but not effusively lyrical; agile and athletic... The warm, folk-song like slow movement is at times almost painfully beautiful, with a shimmering pastoral central section... Marshall-Luck is, again, indefatigable and keenly picks up on the work’s melancholic strain.  Finely recorded and with comprehensive booklet notes, this is a must for fans of 20th-century English repertoire.
EMR CD023 | THE STRAD