Vaughan Williams the Conductor

My favourite Vaughan Williams Symphony is no. 5, so I was pleased to see this new historic release from Somm Recordings with two complete versions conducted by the composer: the world premiere performance on June 24, 1943, and a Proms performance on September 3, 1952. What a great way to end the VW150 year!

The 1943 performance, recorded off-air from the BBC radio broadcast, sounds surprisingly good. Somm's audio restoration and remastering is always great; we have Lani Spahr to thank for finding fine music-making within low-fidelity source material. As to the performance itself, it's perhaps a bit hesitant, which is to be expected considering the uncertainties of the period. Still, Vaughan Williams' uplifting music must have been a great consolation for those listening in the performance hall and on the air; perhaps better times were indeed on their way. More problematic are the periodic missing bits that come about due to swapping out of acetate recording discs. But the historic nature of this performance trumps this technical issue; Nick Barnard, in a fine review, comes up with a good way to describe these lacunae:

"The best analogy I can come up with is when viewing an ancient fresco or mosaic which has been damaged over the centuries; you can see where parts of the original artwork are missing but the sense of the total magnificence of the original remains."

I have no reservations at all concerning the performance of Symphony 5 at the 1952 Proms. This is indeed one of the great Vaughan Williams recordings. That's partly due to better technology; this was recorded direct to long-playing acetate discs, so there are no side-breaks to cut up the music.

There are two other recordings here: a scintillating Dona Nobis Pacem from 1936; and a fine 2nd Symphony, from 1946. Again, there's an important bonus for authenticity and historic importance, but both performances are wonderful in their own right.

This is another fine release from Somm, with detailed liner notes that illuminate both the music and the recording and restoration processes. Perhaps most importantly, there's the great cover photo, by Dudley Styles from 1948, of the composer with his cat Foxy.

Here's the 1952 performance of the 5th Symphony:

 

Authenticity for Christmas

A Vaughan Williams Christmas: original carols and traditional carols arranged by Vaughan Williams

The publication in 1928 of The Oxford Book of Carols was a landmark in the development of the sacred Christmas music we know and love today. Ralph Vaughan Williams and Martin Shaw were the musical editors for the project, and gathered many Christmas songs from across Britain, some of which had gone underground during the Puritan crackdown on Christmas. Vaughan Williams made the arrangements, some simple and some more complex, but all finely judged to sound beautiful as well as authentic when sung by choirs in cathedrals and small churches across the country. He also composed four new carols for the collection, including the touching Blake’s Cradle Song (Sweet dreams form a shade O’er my lovely infant’s head), based on a poem from William Blake's Songs of Innocence.



This is a marvellous disc, with singing of distinction from the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, an excellent choir from a really special place, directed by William Vann. Hugh Rowlands provides tasteful organ accompaniment. Bring a touch of authenticity to your Christmas this year!

As I mentioned, the Royal Hospital Chelsea is a special place; it was designed by Christopher Wren, and sits on a beautiful site next to the Thames. But this recording was made in North London: at St. Jude-on-the-Hill in Hampstead. The marvellous painting featured on the cover of the disc is from Walter Starmer's ceiling at St. Jude’s Church, painted between 1909 and 1935.

St Jude on the Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb. Photo: John Salmon

Ends of a continuum, plus one in the middle

Vaughan Williams: Mass in G Minor, Choral Works

Having just completed a review of a Vaughan Williams CD from Toronto, I'm back on familiar English turf with this new recording of his choral music from The Choir of St. John's Cambridge. However, here's fair warning that I'm going to stay on what might be a controversial topic: the question of Trans-Atlantic Vaughan Williams. The new disc is beautifully sung, and sounds outstanding. But I have a sentimental favourite for the G Minor Mass from the Olden Days of the long-playing record: the Roger Wagner Chorale on a 1961 Angel LP matched with a Bach cantata. Though never released on CD by EMI, there's a very good Pristine Classical re-issue of this most passionate recording from Los Angeles, with a small choir of some of the greatest American singers ever assembled. Though the complete list of singers isn't included in the notes, the Chorale at one point included the Hollywood superstars Marni  Nixon and Salli Terri. In a rave review of the Pristine Classical disc, SGS says "It comes down to rhythm. Vaughan Williams actually swings in this score, and British choirs don't. They tend toward bloodless piety. I think the work really benefits from Wagner's point of view outside the English cathedral tradition." I'm half way to agreeing with this, but I suspect my enthusiasm also comes from more than a bit of sheer nostalgia.

The new disc, meanwhile, is from the Choir of St. John's Cambridge, which I assume puts it firmly in the English cathedral tradition. This performance of the Mass is cooler, more serene; at times it even sounds careful. So sure, looked at in a certain way you might call it bloodless, but then from another one might call the Roger Wagner version vulgar, especially considering the Leopold Stokowski style re-orchestration and recording gimmicks to highlight the work in the Hollywood style.  Vaughan Williams had in mind Byrd and Tallis, of course, but there are more modern influences from the Continent as well, including especially Ravel. We have, then, two completely different readings of this impressive work, each pretty much at an end of the continuum. It's probably very Canadian of me to introduce a (Canadian) compromise that fits nicely in the middle, with choral singing at the same high level as the other two: the 2002 Naxos recording with the Elora Festival Singers under Noel Edison. It's a sign of the greatness of Vaughan Williams' choral writing that three interpretations so completely different can all provide such pleasure.

This disc will be released on May 18, 2018

The Dominion Strikes Back

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music; Oboe Concerto; Flos Campi; Piano Concerto

The world of Ralph Vaughan Williams seems still to be overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, British. The vast majority of recordings today hail from the British Isles, with very few from major American or Continental orchestras or conductors, much less those farther afield. The English Pastoral tradition, the music of the Tudors and the Anglican choral tradition, and the whole range of folk music of the British Isles, come together to build the engine that drives Vaughan Williams' reputation. Those of us who love Vaughan Williams, and I'm sure there are as many today around the world as there ever were, look to the English record companies to keep new albums coming in the Vaughan Williams pipeline.  Chandos in particular has a very deep and broad VW catalogue. It's great to see this superb new disc, to be released on June 1, 2018, coming from Toronto, played and sung by Canadian musicians, and one of the top Vaughan Williams discs in recent memory.

Toronto-born conductor Peter Oundjian, who will become the Toronto Symphony's Conductor Emeritus at the end of the current season, has put together a programme that shows off some of Vaughan Williams' many strengths. After 15 years with the orchestra, he has everything moving at the highest level, like clockwork, from strings to winds to brass and percussion. Two principals from the orchestra, oboist Sarah Jeffrey and violist Teng Li, provide star-soloist level work in the profoundly hopeful Oboe Concerto from 1944 and the sensuous, mystical Flos Campi from the mid-1920s. The latter work features one of the world's great choirs, the Elmer Iseler Singers, a Toronto fixture for nearly 40 years. The choir, along with a strong quartet of solo singers, also elevates the Serenade to Music, from 1938. This is a tour de force of orchestral, choral and solo vocal music, one of the composer's greatest works. The Toronto musicians come together here to provide the most impressive version I've heard on disc. The French-Canadian soloist Louis Lortie, whose own Chandos discography is also distinguished in both depth and breadth, has the virtuoso technique to handle the uncharacteristically hard-edged, blunt piano writing in the Piano Concerto, from 1932. This is a sparkling, brightly lit performance, accompanied by the same controlled fireworks from the orchestra. Both soloist and orchestra are meltingly romantic, of course, in the middle movement Romanza. More top-level Vaughan Williams!

This is a well-filled CD, but unfortunately there isn't room for two works that opened (Fantasia on Greensleeves) and closed (Wasps Overture) the two November 2017 concerts at Roy Thomson Hall recorded for this album. Perhaps Chandos or the TSO could provide one or both as audio or video bonuses on their websites. Fingers crossed!

Two great works played with energy & drive

This Chandos CD is Andrew Davis's second recording of the coupling of Job and the 9th Symphony, which he recorded with the BBC Symphony in the early 1990s as part of his complete symphonies set for Teldec. In the new disc, Andrew Davis appears with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, pinch hitting for the late Richard Hickox to allow Chandos to finish off a complete Vaughan Williams series. These are both great works. The ballet Job has, according to Michael Kennedy, "the stature and cohesion of a symphony', its 1930 date of composition placing it between the three early symphonies and the three middle ones. The Ninth Symphony was completed just a few months before Vaughan Williams' death; I've always been baffled by the questions about its merits. Perhaps the critics were expecting something else when it was premiered in 1958, but this has always sounded to me just like what it is: a work of great power and complexity.

In February 2014 Jonathan Swain surveyed the available Vaughan Williams 9th Symphony recordings for BBC Radio3's CD Review; you can listen to that program here. Of course this was before the present disc was available, and Vernon Handley's version is Swain's top choice. He likes the first Andrew Davis recording, but wishes he could talk instead about Davis's performance with the BBC SO at the 2008 Proms, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of VW's death. Swain feels Davis's conception of the work has changed, and grown: "it was all gain," he says. I'm thinking he would like the new version very much; he thinks that "energy, drive and brilliance of tone" are vital in this music, and I agree. The Chandos recording, helped by amazing sound (I would have loved to hear the surround sound version), has that in abundance. Davis brings tons of energy to this performance, and the Bergen players come through with flying colours. Speaking of players, the saxophones & flugelhorn shine here. This goes for Job as well, whose incidents are as vivid and sharply described as an Annie Leibowitz photograph. The effect of the organ in the Sixth Scene "A Vision of Satan" (which is dubbed in from a recording of the Rieger organ in the Domkirken, Bergen) is astounding.

Here's Sir Andrew Davis re-conducting his own work, listening on headphones in the studio. You know you want to do the same thing: go for it!

British drama and pastorale beauty

I was pleased to see this new Chandos series from conductor Rumon Gamba and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Their two British Overtures discs from 2014 and 2016 were excellent, beautifully presented and played. They were made up of many solid, well-written pieces by late Victorian and Edwardian composers; the usual suspects, mainly, but with the odd gem by people like Ethel Smyth and John Ansell. Volume I in the new series, due to be released March 17, 2017, has mainly rather longer works, with the exception of William Alwyn's lovely little 5-minute piece Blackdown: a Tone Poem from the Surrey Hills. As you'd expect from a title like this, along with rhapsodies and an idyll, from Gloucestershire and Berkshire and The Solent, the focus is more on good old English Pastorale, one component of the Overtures discs, and less on the other component, the English Light Music tradition. The disc is well-filled - 76 minutes - and it shows how much I enjoy that English Pastorale style that my interest didn't flag at all. I've taken to listening to this music quite often; it's often soothing, yes, but the best Pastorale pieces - besides the Alwyn, Frederic Austin's Spring and Ivor Gurney's A Gloucestershire Rhapsody - are somehow almost bracing, with some of the objectivity of the naturalist to go along with the more sentimental artist. Sense and Sensibility.

My favourite piece on the disc, though, is a more dramatic piece that takes us away from the rich farmland of the English countryside. It's Sir Granville Bantock's setting of Shelley's The Witch of Atlas, and it's full of incident and pictures. You can see the scope of setting this poem from a sample stanza, which Bantock takes full advantage of.

VI.
And first the spotted cameleopard came,
And then the wise and fearless elephant;
Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame
Of his own volumes intervolved; -- all gaunt
And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame.
They drank before her at her sacred fount;
And every beast of beating heart grew bold,
Such gentleness and power even to behold.

Though he's a generation younger than the Pre-Raphaelite painters, this piece reminded me of the extravagant detail they so often included in their paintings. John William Waterhouse's The Magic Circle (Tate Britain, 1886), is a good example, with a witch protagonist, if not Shelley's.

Rumon Gamba and Chandos are doing great work in opening up British music of the 19th and early 20th centuries. I look forward to Volume 2 in this series.

Charlie in a trance

This remarkable 2-CD set of historic recordings is most welcome. These are all remarkable readings by the great Charles Munch, with marvellous singing by excellent choirs and star soloists, and outstanding orchestral playing. The sound is generally good, relative to the recording periods, though there are inevitable issues related especially to broadcast recordings.

For me the stand-out is the Debussy Martyre de Saint Sebastien from 1956, with the Boston Symphony, the New England Conservatory Chorus and soloists Florence Kopleff, Catherine Akos and the late Phyllis Curtin. This is an RCA recording that appeared on a mono Victrola LP, and was later released (in stereo) on a RCA Gold Seal CD, coupled with Iberia. The soloists are really excellent, as is the choir, though the French diction of the American singers has been questioned. Don't ask me about that, by the way. I can tell a really bad French accent - here in Canada we sometimes talk about 'Diefenbaker French', named for the Saskatchewan-based Canadian prime minister in the 1950s and 60s - but the subtleties at this level escape me. Also, Charles Munch himself provides the French narration. This atmospheric addition to the score - it sounds like something out of a classic French movie from the 40s - is a real plus for some. An Amazon reviewer says "Now, whenever I hear this music WITHOUT the haunting voice of Charles Munch, it feels empty." I can relate. I remember the LP with real fondness, and there is a positive nostalgic vibe here for me as well.

Another fine Debussy recording is La Damoiselle Elue, taken from a Boston Symphony broadcast from April 11, 1955, and originally released on West Hill Radio Archives. Again we have fine singers, led by the incomparable Victoria de los Angeles and the Radcliffe Choral Society. And again the amazing Boston Symphony shines. This is gorgeous music, played superbly well.

This recording of Poulenc's Gloria is especially historic; it's the world premiere performance from January 1961, with soprano Adele Addison and the Chorus Pro Musica. After some problems in rehearsal, everything worked out beautifully. Here is Poulenc's report, in a letter to his friend Pierre Bernac (from D. Kern Holoman's excellent 2012 biography Charles Munch):

Monday, 23 January 1961: And so, my dear, for a triumph it was a triumph! You know that because of the snow, the Friday concert was postponed until yesterday, Sunday. Saturday night was OK. Very good, very lovely, success, but Munch less inspired than usual. Yesterday, by contrast, with the critics there, a sublime performance. Charlie in a trance, but careful; the chorus amazing, La Addison unbelievable, and thus ovation on ovation. They told me this morning that the press was excellent. Marlene Dietrich was there: kisses, photos, and all.

Besides making me want to rush down to the library to get books of Poulenc's letters - what a sublime writer! - this makes me feel pretty good about this recording.

The Vaughan Williams 8th Symphony comes from a Tanglewood broadcast, and has previously been released on a Pristine CD. The stereo sound is pretty good, and I hope it's not getting boring for me to praise the interpretation and performance. This is one of my favourite VW symphonies; I like the way he goes all out with interesting orchestration and a non-standard structure. "I feel the thing is a symphony, and it is going to remain one," he said; he felt he had to say, that is, considering the oddness of the music compared with the bulk of his symphonic output. I love the way Munch presents a polished French sound when appropriate, but makes the fabulous Scherzo sound as English as possible. This is such a genial performance! (My goodness: now I'm writing like Poulenc!)

With the 2nd Symphony of Arthur Honegger we come to the first piece with compromised sound. This is from an HMV recording made in 1942 with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra.  The symphony is a favourite of Munch's; he made recordings for RCA in Boston in 1953, with the Czech Philharmonic in 1957, the Orchestre national de France for Auvidis-Valois in 1964, USSR State Academic Orchestra for Meloydia in 1965, and the Orchestre de Paris for EMI/Angel in 1967. Munch and Honegger had developed a close friendship, and in 1942 were trying, not always successfully, to navigate the problematic politics of living and working in Occupied Paris. Holoman's book is especially good in this period; I recommend it highly!

The album ends with the 1957 RCA (studio) recording of Barber's Adagio. Munch conducted a famous concert which featured this work at Chartres Cathedral during the BSO's European tour in 1952. And it was played by the Boston Symphony at the memorial service held for Munch in Boston on November 14, 1968, conducted by assistant conductor Charles Wilson. I find this version very moving not because it is so expressive - though it is, of course - but because it is so restrained. Charlie is again in a trance - but careful!

Charles Munch (26 September 1891 – 6 November 1968)

Once more, with feeling

The first volume of this series by the great team of Tasmin Little and Piers Lane, which I reviewed here, was one of the top violin discs released in 2013. This new disc, to be released May 27, 2016, contains two incomplete violin sonatas, one partially written by Frank Bridge in 1904 and completed in 1996 by Paul Hindmarsh, and an early single-movement sonata begun but abandoned by Arthur Bliss in 1916, and prepared for publication in 2010 Rupert Marshall-Luck. The first sonata of John Ireland is a little in the shadow of his great second sonata, but it's the most substantial work on the disc, which is filled up with some sweet pastoral trifles from Ralph Vaughan Williams and (in a recording premiere) William Lloyd Webber.

The Bridge sonata is full of Romantic feeling, but it's rather slight. It's played with panache by Little and Lane, but not any more profoundly than it deserves. The two give the Bliss a more serious performance; the music is almost opulent at times, and the full emotional weight of its genesis during wartime and the death of his brother comes through. The musical centre of the disc, though, is the Ireland. Thanks to this performance I'm re-thinking my earlier view about this composer; this music is such an interesting blend of the English pastoral tradition with bits of Brahms, Wagner and the French Impressionists melded in.

On to round three?