RARE VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
'All involved in this performance plunge merrily into the fray like persons possessed.'
HILARY DAVAN WETTON's performances of the 'Tudor Portraits' and 'Mystical Songs' -
with BILL NEWMAN
Rarely performed RVW seems an unlikely prospect during the composer's
lifetime, but since his death the nine symphonies have assumed the mantle
of main interest. The mid 1950s - early 60s however, evinced interest outside
the UK when Steinberg with the Pittsburgh Symphony and Abravanel with the
Utah Symphony made important recordings of some of the rarer works which
paralleled those about to be made by Boult and Willcocks on EMI and other
labels.
Five Mystical Songs dates from 1911; the same year that saw the
completion of his Sea Symphony. Vaughan Williams was almost 40 and
just completed studies with Ravel in Paris, where he had mastered counterpoint
colourings that the Frenchman had insisted came from discovering the harmonic
progressions on the pianoforte. No instrument being immediately available,
Vaughan Williams' next 3 months in the French capital became an eternal
quest of new discoveries when one was put at his disposal.
The warmth of harmonic colourings becomes immediately apparent as one
listens to the beauty of the accompaniment in 'Easter', 'I
got me flowers', 'Love bade me welcome'. 'The
Call', 'Antiphon', which perfectly compliment the baritone's
sonorous declamation of George Herbert's texts.
John Skelton, the Tudor poet, provided the baudy, realistic and earthy
words that form the basis of Five Tudor Portraits (Elgar, familiar
with Skelton's writings often entitled them as being pure jazz!)
At the Norwich Festival, 1936, Edwin Evans reported in The Musical Times
that he had rarely seen an English audience 'so relieved of concert-room
inhibitions'. The titles of the portraits set the scene just as vividly
as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: 'The Tunning of Elinor Rumming',
'Pretty Bess', 'Epitaph on John Jayberd of Diss',
'Jane Scroop (Her Lament for Philip Sparrow)' and 'Jolly
Rutterkin'. All involved in this performance plunge merrily into
the fray like persons possessed. No wonder that the CD was 'Highly
Recommended' by Fanfare, USA.
Copyright © 5 August 2000
Bill Newman, Edgware, UK
PURCHASE THIS DISC FROM CROTCHET
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