"It is not often that I am able to sing with my own family on CD, but this one was special in that not only was my daughter Jennifer playing the 'cello, but Tristan Gurney was also playing my own violin (made in 1780 by Ferdinando Gagliano), David Owen Norris was playing one of his family too; a piano made by Christopher Ganer in 1781 and even Malcolm Layfield complemented the team by playing his own Gagliano violin (matching mine so beautifully). So overall the whole thing was rather incestuous!

 

The songs themselves could have been sung at the Pleasure Gardens of the time, and many of them were. The title of William Boyce's Spring Gardens, for example already gives us the right flavour for the CD. We have tried to give as much variety as possible in the choice of songs and also the choice of accomplaniment. For example some of them are purely voice and harpsichord, while in Arne's little Cantata Cymon and Iphegenia we decided to add two violins and 'cello in order to make it sound much more as it would have done in his day. David Owen Norris suggested that we also included songs with piano (including the famous Celia Fair, which I had sung as a young man in an arrangement) and the song Go Lovely Rose reminds me so much of the Quilter song years later, and it was so very interesting to have the chance to sing this version by Saloman.

I cannot begin to say how special it was to record these songs with Jennifer. There was virtually no need to rehearse with her because (as she told me later) she already knew how I would phrase them and breathe them. David and I have also sung together for many years now, which made the whole CD such fun to make." Philip Langridge