This is one of Beulah’s regular downloads, so you need
to access their homepage for details of download prices and
availability of tracks. I have
received a disc with numerous tracks, all listed above.
Dawson is a popular subject for reissue, but his repertoire and
discography is enormous, and given his propensity to record under
a pseudonym or two, I
think it unlikely that we’ll ever have a truly comprehensive stable of
reissues. What record companies have largely done is to group his recordings
schematically into things like Empire songs, or ballads, and art-songs, or
his Handel records, and this has served well enough as an entrée.
Beulah has sensibly decided to present the two Amy Woodforde-Finden cycles
that he recorded in 1930 and 1932. I should note that my own review copy of
A
Lover in Damascus is truncated:
If in the Great Bazaars stops after
a brief moment and there is no
Allah be With Us. I assume this is just
a review copy glitch. The
Four Indian Love Lyrics is by some distance
the better known cycle and was contained in the
Very Best Of Peter
Dawson LP box on World Records [SM 411-414]. This probably makes the other
cycle the more valuable though it’s less interesting artistically. The
recording of the
Four Indian Love Lyrics is notable for the Grand Hotel
element in the
Kashmiri Love Song.
Dawson sings Edward German with confidence and stout, bluff manliness;
just what’s needed, in fact. His diction is excellent, as
was the diction of so many of his contemporaries. His Elgar is
superb, his Sullivan equally
so. His Handelian divisions sparkle and this famous trio of recordings should
make him new friends, one hopes. There is a late acoustic, a 1922 Verdi, sung
in English of course that broadens the spectrum somewhat. His Erlking is sung
in the vernacular, as was the fashion: Gerald Moore is the pianist.
If downloads are your thing - they’re not mine but they may be in future
- Beulah’s catalogue should offer some tasty items.
Jonathan Woolf
Peter Dawson (baritone) with accompaniments as above 
