Anon in Love / A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table / etc

"Hill is undoubtedly the best interpreter of Under the Greenwood Tree...When Johnson takes time (he is the slowest pianist of all recordings) to sound out all details of Walton's art the songs achieve an impressiveness unparalleled in any other recording...for a super-budget recording this, as with any of the British song series formerly with Collins and now with Naxos, is a must-have."
--Review by Jurgen Schaarwachter, Musicweb.uk.net, July 2003

"It's magic when music can take you back to a time even the composer could only imagine. Wagner, in the third act of "Die Meistersinger," brings to life, in a vivid explosion, the spirit of the Middle Ages. Listening to the end of Respighi's "The Pines of Rome," you can see the Roman legions marching home in triumph along the Appian Way. William Walton pulls off the feat with his setting of the old nursery rhyme "Oranges and Lemons." It's a simple song (he calls it "Rhyme"), but the clanging bells on the piano, one after another, bring one back ingeniously to 18th century London. That song, with its boisterous accompaniment, is only one of the joys of this record, a bargain for song lovers. Such miniature master pieces as the Spanish "Through Gilded Trellises," the courtly, Shakespearean "Under the Greenwood Tree," the jazzy "Tango - Pasodoble" and "Old Sir Faulk," brimming with fun and virtuosity, make one appreciate Walton's uncanny creativity. Top-notch performers include soprano Felicity Lott, tenor Martyn Hill and the fascinating pianist Graham Johnson, who seems to have inherited from Gerald Moore the mantle of world's greatest accompanist."
--Review by MK, Buffalo News, November 22, 2002