Alexander Armstrong is narrator on the forthcoming album Not Now, Bernard and Other Stories, an irresistible collection of world premiere recordings of music revelling in the magic of childhood memories.
Not Now, Bernard is an all-time classic story by David McKee, set to
music by Bernard Hughes with melodic charm and a subversive
sense of fun. Alexander Armstrong recounts it along with companion piece
Isabel's Noisy Tummy as well as Hughes's The Knight Who Took All Day,
which challenges chivalric convention with its subversive story of
female empowerment.
The Orchestra of the Swan raise a riot of sound in Malcolm Arnold's Toy Symphony, complete
with quail cuckoo, guard's whistle and gloriously irritating toy
trumpets. The album's mood darkens in John Ireland's haunting melodrama
Annabel Lee, a spine-tingling setting of Edgar Allan Poe's final poem
presented here in Bernard Hughes' specially arranged chamber version,
before Armstrong breezes through Judith Weirs brilliant Thread!,
an early work inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry's cartoonish images.
Not Now Bernard and Other Stories is released on 7th February. It is available from
Amazon and all usual sources.
