Stephen Foster: Beautiful Dreamer (2-Part)

In the canon of American song, no name comes ahead of Stephen Foster. The 19th century composer wrote nearly 300 songs, creating some of the US’s best-known songs, among them Camptown Races, Swanee River, My Old Kentucky Home, Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair. These iconic tunes have been performed, recorded, mined for television and film scores and advertisements so much that many Americans recognize them without knowing their author. Beautiful Dreamer, one of Foster’s many sentimental ballads, was published after his death. In this arrangement, the song’s sentimentality has been honoured without exaggeration.