Vaughan Williams : The Song of Love, Albion, Roderick Williams, Kitty Whately

From Albion, The Song of Love featuring songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams, with Kitty Whately, Roderick Williams and pianist William Vann.  Albion is unique, treasured by Vaughan Williams devotees for rarely heard repertoire from the composer's vast output, so don't expect mass market commerical product.  Albion recordings often highlight new perspectives. This  release includes the famous The House of Life, with Kitty Whately, a mezzo-soprano, and songs in German and French, with Roderick Williams, probably the pre-eminent interpreter of English song.

Though the full cycle of The House of Life is now nearly always heard with male voice, even with bass-baritones, the premiere was given at the Wigmore Hall on 2nd December 1904, in the presence of Vaughan Williams himself, with Edith Clegg, a contralto, accompanied by Hamilton Harty. Some of the songs, to sonnets by Dante Gabriel Rossetti,  have texts that suggest a man addressing a woman, such as Love's Minstrels and Heart's Haven, but the others four are gender-neutral. Indeed, Silent Noon, one of the best loved of all Vaughan Williams' songs, lends itself particularly well to the female voice. The warmth in Whately's timbre enhances the image of high summer langour, where "hands lie open in the long fresh grass", the piano gently palpitating.  Whately breathes tenderness into the phrase "All round our nest, far as the eye can pass, are golden kingcups fields with silver edge"  One can almost feel the vista, and endless horizons.  But the "visible silence, still as the hourglass" cannot last. "Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly hangs ......" Dragonflies die, their splendour brief and doomed. Whately's voice seems to hover, making the passionate final declartion ever more poignant. "O! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower". The final phrase "the song of love" (hence the album title) can be a little too high for some male voices, but poses no problems for a mezzo-soprano. Though the cycle is The House of Life, the texts deal with Death, often as a strange visitor, as in Death-in-Life, but the overall impact, given the understatement of Vaughan Williams' settings, suggests that happiness, and life, must be cherished while it lasts.

In the Three Old German Songs (1902) Vaughan Williams explored medieval German song, capturing an archaic nature rather different from folk song, German or English.  The setting of To Daffodils on this set comes from a manuscript found at Gunby Hall, which the composer visited regularly. This differs from the 1895 setting of Robert Herrick's poem in that the short lines ebb and flow from quietness to climax, much like Vaughan Williams' Orpheus and His Lute (1903),.  In the Four French Songs, from 1903-4, Vaughan Williams sets medieval French song, Quant li Louseignolz, for example rather than "Quand le Rossignol", a song with connections to knights who took part in the Crusades. Thus the studied "medieval" formality. Roderick Williams has no peer in English song, though his French is less idiomatic, but he's a natural communicator. Here, his delivery brings out the special qualities in these songs, with their stylized formality, very different from folk song and indeed from later French song. There may well be a connection between these songs and Love's Minstrels in The House of Life, with its "modern" take on medievalism.

With Buonaparty (1908) Roderick Willliams is back on home ground, his delivery animated, crackling with character. This is one of Vaughan Williams’ only two settings of Thomas Hardy's poems though, as we know from his Symphony no 9, he knew Hardy's Tess of the d'Ubervilles and the evocations of Wiltshire and Wessex.  Perhaps the composer didn't warm to Hardy's other values. Gerald Finzi, who did understand Hardy's irony and lack of deference, set more Hardy than anyone else. Finzi's setting of Hardy's Rollicum-Rorum quite explicitly satirizes populist war mongering.  Roderick Williams' Finzi settings of Hardy are essential listening, not only for the dynamism of his performances, but for what he reveals of Finzi's feel for Hardy as iconoclast.  RVW's Buonaparty was intended though not used for Hugh the Drover. It's robust, with a jolly refrain, but not specially perceptive.

With The Willow Song (1897), followed by Three Songs from Shakespeare (1925), Kitty Whately sings some of Vaughan Williams’ settings of Shakespeare. This version of Orpheus and His Lute is  almost neo-classical, its refinement more subtle than the better known earlier version.  With The Spanish Ladies (1912) and The Turtle Dove (1919-1934), Roderick Williams returns to classic Vaughan Williams, the first based on a sea shanty, the second on an old ballad collected by the composer from a traditional singer's performance at the Plough Inn, in Sussex in 1904 . These set the context for Two poems by Seumas O'Sullivan,The Twilight People (1905) and A Piper (1908)  published in 1925, when the composer was working on Riders to the Sea. O'Sullivan was the pen name of James Sullivan Starkey, a Dublin journalist. The plaintive lines may reflect Vaughan Williams' knowledge of Ireland, through the prism of W B Yeats and J M Synge.  Whately and Williams conclude with two duets based on German folk songs, in English translation, Think of me and Adieu.  Though Albion recordings cater to a very specialized market, this set is very well planned and performed : a good introduction for those wanting to delve deeper into Ralph Vaughan Williams and the sources of his inspiration.

Vaughan Williams Symphonies 7 "Antartica" & 9 : Manze, RLPO

Andrew Manze's  Ralph Vaughan Willims series with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra with Onyx continues with Symphony no 7 "Antartica" and Symphony no 9.  Manze 's Antartica includes short superscriptions (spoken by Timothy West) before each section, though the composer had meant them to be read silently.  This may drive some apoplectic with rage, but this is nothing new.  In 1954, Sir Adrian Boult set a precedent, employing Sir John Gielgud.  Though Vaughan Williams  had not intended to have the quotations spoken aloud in performance, he went along with Boult's decision.  Some years later, André Previn followed suit, with Sir Ralph Richardson.  It is also highly relevant that the symphony was created in the years after the film Scott of the Antarctic (1948), starring John Mills, and James Robertson Justice, directed by Charles Frend, for which Vaughan Williams wrote the soundtrack.  It is  worth watching the film (via the British Film Institute), because it is a classic of British cinema at a time when the British film industry was in its heyday.

Scott and his companions struggle against overwhelming forces. They are alone, on a vast continent, at the mercy of forces beyond their control.  Long sequences are shot without dialogue, focussing on the vast, empty landscape as expressed through the music as if  Nature itself  had been given voice. The colours are muted : the whiteness of snow, the darkness of night, intensifying the bleakness. The characters are loosely sketched, and Scott's team of dogs feature frequently.. In ths vast landscape, mortals count for very little.  Effectively the film "is" music, a tone poem with visuals and occasional moments of speech.  The sky will not fall if the symphony is heard with text,  since there are other opportunities to hear the purely orchestral version, and it does us good to remember that without the film, the symphony might not exist.  In any case, if a listener cannot focus on the music, the fault lies with the listener, since this is mighty fine music indeed.

A well-paced Prelude, the pulse suggesting a slow, purposeful trek in difficult terrain. The orchestra wells up, at once ominous and majestic, spotlit by cymbals before proceeding again: The soprano (Rowan Pierce) heads the wordless chorus, eerily enticing the strugglers forward. In the strings and percussion, there are evocations of winds and swirling snow. In the austere later sections, textures open out, suggesting open horizons: trumpets calling forth as the movement enters a final, expansive crescendo.  In "Landscape", the lento movement, Manze's textures are lean, emphasizing the contrast that is to come when the organ enters,  ("Ye ice falls !"), a baleful reminder of what the explorers are up against.  As the sounds fade, the Intermezzo is introduced by a short sentence. In the Epilogue the value of quotation proves itself. Scott is dead,  forced into silence, but his words live on.  "I do not regret this journey; we took risks, we knew we took them, things have come out against us, therefore we have no cause for complaint."  One could blank these words out, but to ignore them would diminish emotional impact.

Vaughan Williams's final symphony, Symphony no 9,  receives an almost elegaic reading from Manze which brings out the darker undercurrents beneath the surface associations with Hardy and Wessex. Tess of the d'Urbervilles wasn't pastoral romance, but tragedy.  Against the darkness of this performance, the clarinet and violin sound clean and poignant. In the scherzo, the saxophone trio are appropriately jarring and discordant : the "joke" here is malevolent.  The Finale isn't tranquil so much as suppressed.  

Earth and Sky - Vaughan Williams Choral Songs - Albion

From Albion Records, which specializes in Vaughan Williams, Earth & Sky, a collection of choral songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams.  Over the years, Albion has produced, in connection with the Vaughan Williams Trust,  numerous collections of rarely heard works by Vaughan Williams, revealing the prodigious extent and variety in his music.  Most of the pieces in this set are original works, but others are settings of traditional songs. This is your chance to hear RVW's 1921 take on Way Down on the Swanee River (Old Folks at home)! Vaughan Williams adapts Stephen Foster's original text, creating a setting for unaccompanied male voices which emphasises the harmonic flow of voices.  Gone are the connotations of sentimentalized slavery, particularly in this performance, which rings with the very English diction of members of the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, directed by William Vann, who doubles as pianist.  Also in this group of folk settings is The Jolly Ploughboy which Vaughan Williams collected in Sussex in 1904, and would in 1949 adapt further in the cantata Folk Songs of the Four Seasons. The choppy rhythms of  The World It Went Well With Me Then (1934) and Tobacco's but an Indian Weed (1934) have a round-like character.  The latter song was originally based loosely on a text from 1699 when smoking was a novelty. Vaughan Williams' setting develops  harmonies which quiver, like rising smoke.  "The vapour's gone, man's life is done : Think of this when you smoke tobacco". Not so much a health warning before its time (1934) but meditation on the transcience of life, and thus very much in the hymn tradition.

 

Eight settings of Vaughan Williams' songs accompnaied by organ (Hugh Rowlands)  demonstrate the composer's background as the editor of the English Hymnal and organist. Five of these songs, though not written as  a unit, form a coherent group in this collection.  A Hymn to Freedom (December 1939) is a unison song, while England my England (1941) is scored for baritone  (Angus McPhee) and organ, the choir offering support and extra texture. The text is by W E Henley, whose poems George Butterworth set in Love Blows As the Wind Blows.  Henley died in 1903, before the First World War and the aggressive jingoism that was popular at that time, which Vaughan Williams, a pacifist, did not share.   The song "celebrates not Britain, nor yet its Empire but a heroic, altogether mythical England", as the booklet notes explain "Spouse-in-chief of the ancient sword".  The Airman's Hymn (1942) was rejected by Westminster Abbey on the grounds that there were no similar settings for the Army or Navy, which is a pity, since the song for mixed voices is lyrical rather than militarist, evoking the freedom of the skies.  "Old hearts are young again, young hearts keep high when we remember you, men of the sky".  Similarly this arrangement of  Land of Our Birth (1944) , employs the voices of children, giving the setting a youthful freshness.

Three Vocal Valses from the Songs of the Wrens (1896) is very early Vaughan Williams,  but is of interest because it shows where the composer was at at this time in his career.   The Songs of the Wrens  was a cycle of twelve poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson,  set by Arthur Sullivan in an attempt to write an English equivalent of the song cycles of Schubert and Schumann.   Though Vaughan Williams created the pieces for voice and piano, he specified SATB as opposed to solo voice, as if to distance them from Lieder. Though Schubert, Schumann and Brahms had also written part-song with piano accompaniment, Vaughan Williams' settings are closer to contemporary Victorian song than to European developments.  

Perhaps most charming and unusual are the Three Gaelic Songs (1954) for unaccompanied voices.  Running together at just over 5 minutes, they form a miniature song cycle with exotic, vaguely Gaelic harmonies, the women’s voices ascendent, the tenor doubling either bass or alto. 

Prom 17 - transcendental Parry, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Brabbins

Thunder and lightning above the Royal Albert Hall before Prom 17  with Martyn Brabbins conductingthe BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Hubert Parry, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst.   Parry's Symphony no 5, the Symphonic Fantasia ,doesn't actually have much to do with the First World War, or Englishness for that matter. It's a brilliantly original work,  which should be appreciated on its own musical terms. Parry's place in British music, and European music, deserves far more attention.   The BBC's fixation with non-musical agendas reinforces cliché and shallow thinking to the detriment of the music itself.

Parry's Symphony no 5, the  Symphonic Fantasia, is a brilliantly original work, looking forwards yet built upon Parry's very deep knowledge of his musical antecedents.   In 1883, he had written of Schumann's Symphony no 4 that it "can be felt to represent in its entirety the history of mental and emotional conditions such as may be grouped around one centre.... the conflict of impulses and desires, the different phases of thought and emotion, and the triumph or failure of the different forces which seem to be represented all give the impression of ....being perfectly consistent in their relationship to one another." 

Thus Parry's symphony - for it is a symphony in four movements (allegro, lento, scherzo and moderato) - encompasses infinite variety in tightly structured coherence. The programmatic titles, Stress, Love Play and Now, are in themselves nothing new, but Parry marks the various sub themes and developments not with conventional German or Italian terms, but with words like "brooding", "pity" and "revolt" which allow interpretive freedom.  Its open-ended, free-spirited nature welcomes new performers, inviting them in, rather than imposing on them.  This matters,  since Parry held strong humanistic and ethical views.   Please read my piece on Parry's The Soul's Ransom HERE.  Some teachers teach students what to do, while others teach students how to think for themselves.  Parry was the latter type : more self effacing than the dominant Stanford and in the long term perhaps a greater creative influence on other composers.

Though Parry in this symphony was thinking back to Schumann and Brahms, the innovative nature of this piece harks to Carl Neilsen's Symphony no 2 "The Four Temperaments", and quite possibly more. It's intricate patterns of theme, recapitulation, development and elongation show, says Jeremy Dibble, "a forward looking attitude to modern structural procedures.  For this reason alone it merits a firmer place in the canon of cyclic works, and perhaps more important still it deserves to be more widely recognized as one of the finest and most assured utterances in British symphonic literature".  If anyone can make a case for Parry as a beacon of modern British music, it would be Martyn Brabbins, whose repertoire spans the late 19th and 20th centuries.   This was a powerful performance, very clearly thought through, much more coherent than when Siniasky conducted the piece at the Proms in 2010.  While  Adrian Boult and Matthias Bamert remain invaluable, Brabbins, with his alertness to the sophisticated inventiveness in the piece,  reveals new insights.

Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending is so extraordinary that even though we've heard it a million times, it still has the power to  astonish.  It's so moving that it always works, whatever the performance. Tai Murray, a former BBC New Generation artist, is technically gifted, shaping the long lines with great charm, suggesting the fragility of the lark.  But there is more to this piece than refinement. I would have preferred more emotional engagement, bringing out the heart rending sense of Sehnsucht of really great performances. Perhaps if we hadn't heard this piece so often we might not expect so much, but how could we live without it ?   But the magic of The Lark Ascending worked yet again : the Proms audience went wild with joy.   
 
With Hubert Parry's Hear My Words, ye People (1894) the organ loft lit up. The organist was Adrian Partington,  evidently enjoying the majesty of the Royal Albert Hall organ.   Just as impressive was  the BBC National Chorus of Wales, as focussed and as precise as they were in last week's Mahler Symphony no 8. Please read more about that here.  Though Parry wrote Hear My Words,  ye People for enthusiastic amateurs, with top notch singers like these, the anthems rang out with magnificent conviction.  The soloists were Ashley Riches and Francesca Chiejina.  This isn't an overblown extravaganza, but all the better for that as it shows the intimacy of Parry's style even when writing for choir, organ and (minimal) orchestra.  Gustav Holst's Ode to Death (1919) blends voices and orchestra to create lush textures which suddenly ignite into crescendo.  returning again to ethereal harmonies "Over the treetops I float thee along, over the rising and sinking waves, come lovely and soothing death, come with joy!".  Harps and fine, bell-like tones in the orchestra suggest transcendence.  

In Vaughan Williams's Symphony no 3  the "Pastoral"  winds and bassoons murmured, as dark and impenetrable as smoke, a rather apposite image since the piece was written after RVW's experiences in the trenches, collecting bodies from fields which should have produced crops.  A  violin melody wafted upwards. Like the Lark it ascends, but its ascent seemed haunted. The natural trumpet in the second movement sounded deliberately hollow, like a trumpet blown by an ordinary soldier, perhaps not quite in tune.  A horn repeats the motif : the last Post meets the last Trumpet at the End of Time. What might the robust dances in the scherzo represent ?  Perhaps this is a threnody not only for those killed in the trenches but for an innocence that cannot return.  Francesca Chiejina’s voice materialized from high up in the balcony, which in the Royal Albert Hall is very far away indeed.  This is important because it creates a sense of distance.  Whatever the soprano might signify, the sound should be otherworldly.  That's why the song is mysterious vocalize. I don't even think it's meant to be an angel or anything quite so comforting, but a reminder that there are things  that are beyond human comprehension and distances that can never be bridged. 

But what of this Proms audience  ?  Even in the expensive seats, people were fidgetting, not paying attention, behaving as if they were at home in front of their TVs.  Some walked out, even after Hear My words, ye People and the Ode to Death.  Why weren't they paying attention to serious subjects and seriously good musicianship ?  Therein lies the danger of marketing music as consumer disposable.   Eventually audiences assume that as long as they've paid for something, they don't need to make an effort to put anything of themselves into the equation.   Maybe what we need is marketing that respects the art it is supposed to serve.  [Since writing this, I've heard from people who weren't able to attend because the Prom sold out almost immediately. All the more it's a shame that those who did get tickets didn't care enough about the music. The ones walking out after the choral pieces were cheerfully heading off to the pub. So much for the music and indeed for the subject ].

Please also read Robert Hugill in Opera Today

The Passions of Ralph Vaughan Williams

John Bridcut's film The Passions of Vaughan Williams is now available on DVD, marking the 60th anniversary of the death of Ralph Vaughan Williams.  Understanding a composer as a human being  enriches our appreciation of his music. When this film was first shown on BBC TV it shocked some. So RVW liked women ? There are worse sins and no coercion seems to have  been involved.  When Ursula Vaughan Williams wrote her memoirs, she had to be circumspect.  But she outlived most of their circle and in later years was irrepressibly candid, and we should respect her.  Ten years on from the first broadcast, I think we're mature enough to be able to cope, if we genuinely love the music.

Bridcut's film is authoritative, based as it is on the testimony of those who knew the man and his music, amongst them Michael Kennedy and Richard Hickox, both now passed away.  Anthony Payne, fortunately, is still with us, and hopefully for a long time yet.  There's a beautiful shot in which Kennedy is seen listening to a recording of A Sea Symphony, his face at once alert and contemplative. There are clips of a live performance of the Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis, with the "long, long reverberation time", in the words of Nicola Le Fanu, resonating into the vastness of Gloucester Cathedral , the camera panning on the huge stone pillars.  Archive film of Edwardian London are shown with clips of modern London to the sound of A London Symphony : RVW was an urbanite through and through.  The war years are evoked by photographs of the composer in uniform, and the strains of Symphony no 3, by no means "pastoral". 

If Vaughan Williams cut a Falstaffian figure (in the words of Robert Tear "like a sofa, with the stuffing coming out"), he was also an Ariel.   He needed youth and beauty.  Flos campi, says Michael Kennedy, quoting Ursula, was not "a mystical work but Ralph's most senuous sensual work", inspired in part by a young woman whom the composer encouraged, working himself up into passion but taking things no further.  He also had what might have been a flirtation with Fanny Farrar,  which seems to have ended in disappointment on her part.  Clips from RVW's Fourth Symphony and  Satan's Dance from Job, a Masque for Dancing  make one wonder whether the composer used more   negative things to generate his music. This film also includes  a taped interview, then hitherto unheard, in which Ursula describes the first kiss which led soon after to a full blown affair. Nonetheless, RVW and Adeline were close, to the extent that Ursula was jealous.  How Adeline felt about the situation, we shall never know, since we only have Ursula's point of view, which understandably, she might have sanitized. Adeline's family were less impressed.  But what choice did Adeline have, given her dependence ? Quite possibly she was more hurt than she let on.  Perhaps one day the story can be told giving Adeline more respect, for she, too, was a strong character, and had served the composer loyally. 

After Adeline's funeral, Vaughan Williams went into a rage, destroying her things, then moving back to London.  His final years were happy, creatively and personally.  We hear snatches of the Ninth Symphony and Tired, the most personal of the Four Last Songs.  John Bridcut has made many films, some somewhat uneven, but The Passions of Vaughan Williams  is one of his finest.  Biography is speculation, but it is also a search for truth.  Art itself is a search for truth, greater even than those who create it.  

Jurowski : Kancheli and blazing Ralph Vaughan Williams

Vladimir Jurowski (photo : Thomas Kurek)

Vladimir Jurowski at his finest in last week's concert at the Royal Festival Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, part of their ongoing series Belief and Beyond Belief.  Jurowski is special to me because he's an extremely spiritual personality,  who thinks deeply about music as part of human experience. When Jurowski speaks, he's worth listening to;  he doesn't do small talk. A while back, he did a series in Russia about war and peace for audiences that didn't look like they spent much time in black tie. His choices were eclectic, even avant garde, but he described them in such a way that the audience held onto his every word. He communicated such sincerity that he drew respect even when the language barrier intervened. The South Bank is so full of hype these days that's it's annoying even to navigate the website. But there's nothing fake about Vladimir Jurowski.

In this concert, Jurowski and the LPO did an unconventional but thoughtful programme  Giya Kancheli Mourned by the Wind and  Bohuslav Martinů: Memorial to Lidice together with Ralph Vaughan Williams Symphony no 9.  Fortunately it's now broadcast on BBC Radio 3 , since going to the South Bank is more pain than pleasure these days.  The other big plus is that we get to hear Jurowski talk about the music, more fluently than most presenters. Third bonus, as interval feature Herbert Howell's a capella chorale Take him, Earth, for cherishing.

Kancheli called Mourned by the Wind (1988) a "Liturgy" but it's not religious so much as an intense, personal outpouring of grief for a dead friend.  It begins with a single chord which resonates into silence. The viola enters, quietly at first, playing a figure that hovers back and forth between two poles. Isabelle van Keuelen held the line firmly, unswayed by the sudden cataclysmic outburst in the orchestra behind her.  Fierce staccato blasts, another cataclysm, wilder than the first, with thundering timpani, and another "death stroke" single chord.  But the viola isn't defeated.  Emerging from a rumbling, shimmering background it defines a melody that evolves into delicately plucked patterns: resplendent like starlight.  The "death strokes" return, wave after wave, but the viola holds its plaintive line, until it evaporates into silence.  

Martinů Memorial to Lidice (1943) commemorates Lidice in Bohemia, obliterated by the Nazis. Again the subject matter is death but on a more abstract musical level; the connections include contrasting poles. In Kancheli the tension swings between staccato orchestra and solo viola, In Martinů, the contrast is between brute force and the innocence of folk music. 

Thus a dramatic context was set for Vaughan Williams's Ninth Symphony from 1956-7.  Whatever the symphony may or  may not be about,  Jurowski gave it a savage power and majesty one doesn't often associate with British music. All to the good, for here, at the very end of his life, RVW is breaking new ground. He will not "go gentle into that good night".  He uses saxophones in sassy chorus, and a flugelhorn, extending the low resonance of the brasses, which include tuba, and contrabassoon. Dark colours of foreboding and passages which march with demonic violence. 

It's also a strikingly modern work, vividly experimental and unabashed, as Jurowski's approach made clear.  No wonder critics 60 years ago didn't know what to make of it.  As Edward Said said, "late style" can be liberating since a composer no longer needs to conform. Elliott Carter joked that in his own "late, late style", he didn't have to seek approval from anyone but himself.  Yet RVW is totally in control of his powers, highly disciplined, attention focused on essentials, nothing superficial. He uses the flugelhorn for a purpose, as if blasting away at the veneer of conventional "good taste". Life's too precious to fritter mindlessly away!  The tightness of the orchestration was reflected in the strength of the performance, the LPO surpassing themselves.  An RVW Ninth that was monumental in every way.  If the LPO doesn't release this commercially, it will enter the bootleg market as a milestone in RVW interpretation. 

Prom 15 Anthony Payne, RVW

At Prom 15, the world premiere of Anthony Payne's Of Land, Sea and Sky, with Andrew Davis and the BBC SO. A strange, but fascinating piece with clear antecedents in the British choral and orchestral tradition, yet, like Payne himself, utterly individual, even idiosyncratic. A landscape of visual images described in sound, yet also a landscape intuitively felt and interpreted.  It begins quietly, eddying ripples of sound, a woodwind calling us forward, and then the words, "Of land and sea...." from the male chorus and "and sea and sky, and water" from the women. Immediately I felt a sense of confluence, of swirling forces separate yet moving together. "Calling, calling" the voices sing. But in the percussion we can hear the thud of thundering hooves. "Galloping, galloping" sing the chorus. The image apparently is of wild horses in the Camargue, running through waves on a windswept beach.

For a moment the music stills and changes direction. This time bright, clear shards of sound dissipating into smaller, shining fragments.  The voices create swathes of shimmering sound: a pity that diction smothered words but that added to a sense of mystery. Brasses thrust us along swiftly, then tense, pumping ostinato, swept away by trumpets, contrasted with circular pools of resonant sound, swelling and rising like a giant wave. .As an impressionistic piece Of Land, Sea and Sky engages the imagination, which is more than can be said for many works. Phrases such as "like symphony" pop out like signposts in a  landscape of shadows and illusions. (On re listening I think the abstraction increases as the piece goes along : assessing it in  pictorial terms might be a big mistake)  Towards the end, the choruses sing "Of land and sea", but I don't think we're back at the beginning at all.  Like the landscape, something has changed in us, if we've been paying attention.

Ralph Vaughan Williams Toward the Unknown Region (1906-7) reaffirmed Payne's connection to very deep roots in the English tradition, which perhaps spring from the transcendentalist poets of the 17th and 18th centuries, where conceptual ideas - not necessarily religious - underpin expression.  "Walk out with me " wrote Walt Whitman, "Towards the Unknown Region, where neither ground is for feet, nor any path to follow".  Mystical concepts, yet ideas which very much connect to the music of our own times. Luigi Nono, for example, might have understood, given his thing for the blurring of boundaries between land, sea and sky. He'd have got Payne, I think. . In 1906/7, RVW was setting forth, too, leaving behind the stolid certainities of Charles Stanford, and finding his own voice via Ravel. Andrew Davis, the BBC SO and the BBC Symphony Chorus at their finest.

Prom 15 might have been an opportunity for the BBC to explore this strand in music in greater depth. Tchaikovsky's The Tempest actually worked very well, with its magical romance, beautifully realized. But the Powers That Be want Box Office  rather than challenge. Hence Max Bruch's Violin Concerto noi 1 in G minor, which never fails to delight, even in a non-challenging generic performance.  Maybe Ray Chen and his followers are the future of classical music, but folks like me would prefer accounts with more character.

Vaughan Williams Weekend St John's Smith Square

Ralph Vaughan Williams and Friends Weekend at St John's Smith Square, a glorious three-day celebration of British music. This follows on the success of previous SJSS weekends devoted to Schubert and Schumann.  Curated by Anna Tilbrook, the RVW/SJSS weekend features The Holst Singers, James Gilchrist, Philip Dukes, and Ensemble Elata. The Weekend runs from 7th to 9th October, but get tickets soon as they will sell fast. There's no clash with the Oxford Lieder Festival which starts the following weekend, this year featuring Schumann.


Friday 7th at 7.30 : The Holst Singers conducted by Benjamin Nicholas launch the festival on Friday evening: Parry I was Glad, Stanford Beatoi quorum via, W Lloyd Weber, Howells Requiem, Holst Nunc Dimittis, and RVW's Lord thou hast been our refuge





Saturday 8th at 1 pm :  RVW Songs of Travel, Elgar Salut d'amour, Frank Bridge Oh, that it were so, Rebecca Clarke Passacaglia, Quilter : Go, lovely Rose, Bantock Hebrew Melody, Ivor Gurney Ludlow and Teme

Saturday 8th 4 pm : The Folk Connection  Quilter I will go with my father a-ploughing, Percy Grainger : Molly on the Shoree, RVW : Along the Field, Six Studies in English Folk Song, Winter's Willow and Linden lea, Rebecca Clarke : I'll bid my heart be still, Grainger: Handel in the Strand.

Saturday 8th at 7.30 : The Spiritual Realm  RVW : Rhosymedre, Four Hymns, Orpheus with his lute, Sky above the roof, Silent Noon, Piano Quintet, Finzi : Til the Earth Outwears, Elgar : Chanson de matin, Chanson de nuit (photo above Finzi and RVW, courtesy Finzi Trust)

Sunday 9th at 11.30 : The Shadow of War : Bliss Elegaic Sonnet, Ireland The Darkened valley, Butterworth : Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad, Elgar : Piano Quintet

Sunday 9th at 3 pm : The Shadow of War II : Ireland ;The Soldier, Blow out, you bugles, Spring Sorrow, Elgar : Sospiri, Gurney: Severn Meadows, Lights Out, Sleep, In Flanders, By a Bierside, Howells : Elegy, RVW : On Wenlock Edge

Erotic Ralph Vaughan Williams - Fair Child of Beauty

Ralph Vaughan Williams : Fair Child of Beauty, the latest release from Albion Records, the recording label of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society.  All Albion's recordings present RVW rarities, but this disc has a much wider potential market. It's important because it demonstrates the creative relationship between the composer and Ursula Wood, who would later become his wife. Many remember Ursula as the elderly lady who presided over RVW Society events and was the force behind the Little Missenden Festival, but Ursula's own role as an artist is overshadowed.

While still a student, Ursula  had heard RVW's Job, a Masque for Dancing.  Perhaps she remembered this when she approached RVW with a scenario for a masque based on Edmund Spenser's Epithalamion, a text she'd loved since her schooldays, Spenser had written the piece for his own wedding in 1594, so despite its invocations of Gods and images from classical antiquity, it's enlivened by heartfelt immediacy.  The bridegroom anticipates the arrival of the bride. The rituals of the ceremony progress until the couple are left "concealed through covert night" in wedded bliss. The scenario proved prophetic. RVW invited Ursula to lunch to discuss the project. As they left, Ursula later said "as we were waiting for the light to cross, he put his arm around me and gave me a passionate kiss...by the time I went to see him off, I had fallen in love",

And thus was born A Bridal Day: A Masque by Ursula Wood, to use its official title   This was music to be danced to, and mimed, in the formal but understated Tudor style, hence the simplicity of the orchestration - solo flute, piano, five strings and a small vocal ensemble. The direct, personal nature of the poem is further emphasized  by the use of a baritone, declaiming the spoken narration and singing where necessary. The bride remains veiled behind the music, which throughout bears RVW's individual stamp.

Ursula was to have mimed the part but the first full performance did not take place due to the war. Perhaps, a piece that celebrates Juno the guardian of marital fidelity and Hymen, the spirit of virginity, might have been sensitive in an era when moral judgement went against extra-marital relationships.  The refrain "all  the woods will answer and their echoes bring" would be a bit racy when the lady in question was a Mrs Wood.  It is a delightful piece, a very Turangalîla-Symphonie, glorifying explicit erotic passion.  Many, many years ago, reading about Ursula VW and Elizabeth Maconchy, I  observed how modern those women were in their honest enthusiam for healthy pleasure, and nearly got lynched for lèse-majesté  To Ursula's credit, she was never a hypocrite.

The premiere did not take place until 1953, but the black and white television transmission didn't please the Vaughan Williamses. Perhaps now is the time when some enterprising ensemble can bring The Bridal Day to fruition? But nothing twee, please. The beauty of this recording lies in the excellence of performance. The Britten Sinfomia Septet conducted by Alan Tongue play with committment and dignity.  Philip Smith sings the baritone part, John Hopkins declaims the narration and the Joyful Company of Singers, directed by Peter  Broadbent, do the choruses, as cheerfully and naturally as if they were singing at a real wedding.

Disappointed by the reception of The Bridal Day, RVW created Epithalamion, a Cantata (1957), reworking The Bridal Day for more conventional chorus and orchestra, leaving out the solo voice, narration and dances.. This later work is reasonably well known, since its sequences suggest snatches of RVW's other music. It's also less emotionally up front, almost neutered, which might perhaps cater to some audiences,  but hasn't the quirky personality of The Bridal Day.

Merry RVW Xmas

Prom 17 Uncomfortable Englishmen RVW Elgar Elder

Prom 17 at the Royal Albert Hall, London, Sir Mark Elder conducting Vaughan Williams and Elgar, with the Hallé, an orchestra with a golden Elgar pedigree.  No safe complacency in this programme though, because the two main pieces confront an uncompromising aspect of the English psyche.

Starting the Prom with Debussy Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune was a clue. Debussy, even before Schoenberg, was experimenting with tonality  and duality, breaking down the barriers of convention. The flute represents Pan,  and his disciple the faun. The flute solo was wonderful, but much of the beauty of the piece lies in its mysterious ambiguity and the multi-level interaction between the flutes and lower-voiced winds, strings and harps. The undergrowth in the forest sings, too, so to speak.

A good prelude to Ralph Vaughan Williams' Sancta Civitas (The Holy City). RVW called it an oratorio, but it harks back to the doughty non-conformism of William Blake and John Bunyan  and the militant idealism of the early Victorian age. In spirit it's akin to The Pilgrim's Progress ,which occupied RVW's mind most of his adult life. (Read more about that HERE.) The texts are drawn from the Book of Revelation, not from the Gospels, and it taps into millenialist Low Church concepts quite alien to Establishment Anglicanism. Outsider theology, which Vaughan Williams recognized, with his knowledge of High Church values and hymnal.  Down Ampney is very far away.

 From mysterious low rumblings in the orchestra, the baritone, Iain Paterson called out forcefully,  "I was in the Spirit and I heard the great voice of the people praising God and singing Alleluia". The voices of four choirs rang out, the Hallé Choir, the London Philharmonic Choir, the Trinity Boys Choir and the Hallé Youth Choir, in glorious tumult.  Note the word "spirit" for in Revelation, there are seven Spirits of God.  Yet man is mortal - what gives? The mood is apocalyptic. Heralded by trumpets the massed voices sang "King of Kings, Lord of Lords".  Heavens open, and an Angel appears. The swaying cross-harmonies in the voices, and the back and forth antiphonal exchange, emphasized chaos and disruption.  The kings of the earth are displaced and evn th great city of Babylon is no more.

The middle section, the Allegro Moderato, is defined by a solo violin, whose lines soar up the register, heavenwards, a clear reference to A Lark Ascending.   Here the violin serves an extra purpose, uniting the faithful on earth (the darkly undulating choirs) with Heaven. The choirs sang "Glo-o-ory", the legato swerving with  carefully judged  waywardness. The textures are dense, but Elder and the choirmasters ensured that the intricate cross-patterns were kept distinct,  Spatial textures were well executed, too. The Distant Choir of young voices floated across the vast distances of the Royal Albert Hall. The violin leads, like an angel, towards a grand climax, a blaze of trumpets and the booming of the organ led to temporary.detumescence. From near silence, the voice of the tenor, Robin Tritschler rose, from the balcony far above the huge auditorium. "Fear not" he sang. He's an angel, reassuring the faithful that they're at one with God. But listen to that ending, where a simple, tentative line  recurs and recedes,, suggesting that, for Vaughan Williams, the agnostic, there would be no easy resolution.

More Spirits followed in Elgar's Symphony no 2 in E flat major. The composer quoted Shelley "Rarely. rarely comest Thou, O Spirit of Delight" which might sound optimistic, but the poem continues with self-doubt. "Wherefore hast thou left me now/ Many a day and night? "Was Elgar intuiting the loss of creative powers, or expressing the anxieties  that may have been part of his outwardly peaceful life? He called this symphony "the passionate pilgrimage of a soul".  Elder defined the big opening outburst with assurance, the "spirit of delight" motif descending elegantly, leading  into confident expanses of sound, suggesting open horizons and open vistas. But the brass flared up, creating a jagged air of alarm,  Trying to explain, Elgar wrote that it was "a sort of malign influence wandering through a summer night in a garden."   Perceptively, Elder conducted the ending of the first movement so it bristled, the line ripping along with haunting, almost jazz liike tension.

The Larghetto began with the expansiveness with which Elgar's music is so often associated, but the emotional temperature dropped as the tempo slowed.  Elder shaped the measured pace of the recurrent waves of sound, building up to  a crescendo which, to me, felt like a last, fond looking back on the past. The colours darkened, as if night were falling . The  Rondo has connotations of Venice,  Elgar having written, enigmatically, "Venice and Tintagel" . Elder and the Hallé created the deceptively bright spirit: one could imagine a busy city with tourists on holiday. Elgar wasn't aware of Thomas Mann when the symphony was being written, but we, inescapably, cannot miss the imagery.  The bustle and wild, whipping lines with which the movement ends certainly suggest hurried departure, which may well fit in with the idea of the death of the King to whom the piece was dedicated, and to the idea of the creative despondency Elgar was to encounter.  Moderato e Maestoso, the final movement,  was played with beautiful richness, so when its dying embers faded, the sense of loss was profound.

Elgar told the orchestra who played at the premiere: "Some of you will know that dreadful beating that goes on in the brain which seems to drive out every coherent thought.....Percussion, you must give me all you are worth!" Certainly Mark Elder and the Hallé gave all they were worth, which was a lot. The percussion didn't need to crudely drown out the orchestra, but the sense of tension and foreboding Elgar wanted was most certainly part of this superb performance. Seriously idiomatic Elgar from Elder, one of the great Elgarians of our time, and from the Hallé who've been doing Elgar since he was "new music".

Listen to this Prom again HERE

The Elgar Symphony will be broadcast on BBC TV 4 on 2nd August.

Vaughan Williams Alwyn Oramo Prom 36

After ten days of safe but dull Proms, at last something splendid: Sakari Oramo conducted the BBC SO. Ralph Vaughan Williams's incidental music is far from incidental. William Alwyn wrote a lot of incidental music, but hearing his symphonic work with Vaughan Williams's incidental music puts it into context

Oramo conducts Vaughan Williams with an intensity that makes one appreciate the depths in RVW, often missed by the emphasis on the pastoral aspects of his work. The Overture to the Wasps dates from the same period as On Wenlock Edge, and marks RVW's creative breakthrough   Maurice Ravel liberated Vaughan Williams from himself, so to speak. No longer is he constrained by the comfortable certainties of Charles Villiers Stanford.  He'd learned "to orchestrate in points of colour rather than in lines", to be an artist foremost and above all.  Having faced that baptism of fire, he would go on to become a true original, reimagining the English experience in his own unique way.

Although The Wasps was written before the start of WWI, its subject is war. These aren't bucolic wasps buzzing around a nest, even though the composer depicts them figuratively. The famous Overture comes from a much larger piece for voice and orchestra, based on Aristophanes' The Birds. The Birds mock man's obsession with war, and the wasps protest. When wasps are disturbed, they attack. In Germany, Walter Braunfels (who served at the front) would soon begin Die Vögel, a work sadly misunderstood by conductors like James Conlon. Oramo emphasizes the suppressed violence in RVW. A lyrical melody hovers, harps suggesting peaceful reverie. The mood is soon broken. Sharp, crisp ostinato, an almost "Russian" angularity, whirring figures like a march. Are the wasps flying upwards in attack?

If only the BBC could have given us the full Wasps, rather than the disembodied Overture. It's utterly relevant this year when we remember 1914. Instead, we had William Alwyn's Symphony no 1. Alwyn is hardly obscure, even though he's not been heard at the Proms for 50 years. His work is well represented on recordings, and familiar to those who enjoy the Golden Age of British cinema. Like many other composers of his period, Alwyn wrote for film.  Alwyn's Symphony no 1 is ambitious, part of a grand scheme of related symphonies. Allusions to technicolor panoramas are approrpiate because the piece unfolds in a series of attractive vignettes which translate easily into visual images. Low, growling basses, giving way to open spaces, sudden surges of strings introducing changes of scene. It's picturesque and relaxing, so its appeal is easily appreciated.  On the other hand, it's illustrative, amiable rather than thought-provoking.  RVW can  say more in ten minutes, almost without trying.  It's totally irrelevant that Alwyn lived in Blythburgh while Britten lived in Aldeburgh. There are sections of the British music audience who need heroes for their own reasons, and don't necessarily do their heroes any favours.  Alwyn is not an incidental composer, but he's more genial than genius..

RVW's The Lark Ascending, however, is a true masterpiece, a work of such brilliance that it defies category. It is so beautiful, and so transcendent that it's almost pointless to analyze.  Perhaps RVW is describing a bird in flight, but that bird is escaping from the world into another more rarified plane of existence. It's exquisite, but also inexplicably, heart breakingly sad. It's much more than an "English Idyll", since it appeals to so many, and in different cultures.  Janine Jensen's performance was good, though there have been other, more powerful interpretations. Oramo's clear focus on the details in the orchestration brought out the connections between Tle Lark Ascending and The Wasps. Interesting insight.

Vaughan Williams's Job : a Masque for Dancing  (1931) was written to be danced to, yet it's no more a conventioinal ballet  than The Pilgrim's Progress is a typical opera. Dancers need more rests than orchestral players, so much music for dance evolves in scenic episodes. This also suits RVW's taste for the formality of Elizabethan music. Although I don't have the programme notes to quote from, and I don't feel like digging up a CD, I'm pretty sure, from memory, that Oramo was conducting the full  score, rather than the version for dancing. It's not a symphony, though the sound is full and rich, because it evolves in a series of scenes. Thus, however, it made a satisfying conclusion to the Prom, following as it did from Alwyn's Symphony. Listen how RVW defines "cinematic" climaxes. Even as audio, one imagines visual and dancers.  And from this emerges a solo violin, playing an elusive, nostalgic melody.  The Wasps, The Lark Ascending and Job: a Masque for Dancing have been heard together before, but Oramo reminds us why the combination is so good.

Britten, RVW, Finzi - Nash Ensemble, Wigmore Hall

"Will you see the infancy of this sublime and celestial greatness?"
(Thomas Traherne c. 1636-1674).

The Nash Ensemble's series at the Wigmore Hall, "Dreamer of Dreams" continued its survey of British music in the first half of the 20th century with an intriguing programme. Many underlying themes, and thoughtful juxtapositions.
 (photo of the Nash Emsemble credit  Hanya Chlala/Arenapal)

 Britten's Simple Symphony op 4 for strings (1933-34) shows the composer in exuberant high spirits. The "Boisterous Bourrée" romped cheerfully. The "stomping" melody mimics heavy feet dancing, but needs to sound humorous. In the "Playful Pizzicato", the Nash Ensemble strings plucked crazily but in complete technical control. Britten is having fun, sending up "serious" music while being perfectly serious. In the early 1930's Walt Disney was making Silly Symphonies, an extremely inventive series of cartoons. While nursery characters frolicked, the audience was listening to orchestral music in the classical tradition. Britten enjoyed movies. Quite possibly, he saw Disney's work. A Silly Symphony based on a Simple Symphony would have been delightful. The themes in this symphony derive from the compositions Britten wrote as a child; he re-invents them (Read my article"Benjamin Britten Boy Wonder" HERE). "Simple" is a cheekly misnomer. While this short, sharp symphony bubbles with child-like glee, there's nothing childish in the technique. This is Britten, bursting into the public sphere, inspired by the wonder of creative growth.

The recital would end with Gerald Finzi's Dies Natalis which describes the miracle of creation through the eyes of a new born.  Between these two pillars, the Nash Ensemble placed early works by Frank Bridge and Ralph Vaughan Williams, extending the theme of youth and artistic birth.  

Bridge was later to become a formative influence on Britten, who opened horizons for Britten beyond the confines of British music at the time. Bridge's Three Songs for voice, viola and piano (1906) aren't specially innovative, and rely heavily on good performance. Roderick Williams animates the songs with committment. He's beautiful to listen to but the texts and text settings aren't up to his standards. "Blow...ye..winds" doesn't flow even if the poet is Matthew Arnold. "Where is that our soul doth go?" is a translation of a poem by Heine, so stodgy that it would defy most composers. Fortunately, Bridge's ear for viola was much more acute. The viola part dominates, voice and piano taking secondary place. Laurence Power's sensual playing made these pieces effective. Perhaps they are really songs for viola?

In 1908, Ralph Vaughan Williams went to France to study with Ravel. This was his artistic breakthrough.  His Five Mystical Songs (1906-11) are well known in the orchestral version, so hearing them as piano song shows how they bridge religious music and art song. Herbert wrote hyms for the godly: Vaughan Williams wrote hymns though he wasn't devout. Easter is fervent.  Roderick Williams emphasizes the key words and phrases, like "Thy Lord is Risen", but the sensuous beauty of his voice tempered their ferocity. The text suggest militant Christianity : Williams's warmth imbues it with humanity. The middle verse "Awake my lute" shines with characteristic RVW cadences, well defined by Ian Brown the pianist.  Roderick Williams's voice is naturally beautiful and colours the words with sensitivity.  In I got me flowers, the imagery is delicate, but the subdued chromatic middle section culminates in a forceful finale. "There is but one, and that one forever" sang Williams forcefully, supported by Brown's playing which resonated like a church organ.

 Antiphon is known to Anglicans as the hymn My Lord is King!. "Let all the world in ev'ry corner sings" erupts with a flurry of bell sounds, as if bells were ringing all over the world. Ralph Vaughan Williams admirers connect immediately with the pealing bells of In Summertime on Bredon (from On Wenlock Edge)  Text is foursquare. "The Church with palms must shout". But Vaughan Williams makes it clear that, for him, this is not anthem but art song.

William Alwyn's Pastoral fantasia for solo viola and strings  (1939) may have been included as a vehicle for Laurence Power. His playing made the piece worthwhile and enjoyable even though the work itself isn't memorable. Alwyn's pastoralism is pretty, but we know from Vaughan Williams that landscape painting in music is much more than surface charm. It was good to hear Alwyn in the company of Britten, Finzi and Vaugham Williams so we appreciate their originality all the more.

Gerald Finzi's masterpiece Dies Natalis op 8 (1939) was premiered at the Wigmore Hall in January 1940, by Elsie Suddaby. The Finzis and their sons used precious petrol rations to drive up to London for the occasion. For many in this 2012 Wigmore Hall audience, with many Finzi specialists, it was the much anticipated highlight of the evening. Unfortunately, Susan Gritton was indisposed, which is a pity as she's very good. She didn't seem well the previous week at the Mendelssohn concert (reviewed here) but  her replacement was left so late that the announcement had to be made on stage. Ailish Tynan was aparently cooking lamb for dinner when she was called to sing. Dies Natalis is difficult to sing but several sopranos and tenors have it in their repertoire. Since Tynan's best work has been in oratorio, her performance was interesting because it showed, like RVW's Five Mystical Songs, that oratorio and art song are fundamentally different genres.

Dies Natalis begins with an Intrada where themes to come emerge briefly. It suggests, to me, the swirling gases of the cosmos, before the Universe was formed. Dies Natalis deals with no less than the miracle of Life and Creation, so this interpretation is valid, since it suggests primordial growth and vast cosmic forces. I was a little surprised that the themes weren't as clearly defined as they could be, but that hardly matters, since the concept is so overwhelming. This sense of infinite space and time is important because the poet, Thomas Traherne, though Christian, was a mystic. Transcendentalism "transcends" traditional dogma.  "Will you see the infancy of this sublime and celestial greatness?" the poet asks. Traherne's Rhapsody is prose, but with strange syntax, which Finzi respects by setting it with unsual rhythms  "I was a stranger, which at my entrance into the world was saluted and surrounded with innumerable joys: my knowledge was Divine!", the word "divine" jumping forth from the score, as if illuminated by unearthly glow.

Although there are references to Adam and to God, Traherne'surreal imagery bears little resemblence to conventional religious text. "The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never shall be reap'd nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting". Finzi's dynamic extremes emphasize the psychic extreme of the poet's imagination. They aren't there to display vocal gymnastics. Tynan's notes were pitched to extremes, at the expense of diction.  We should be hearing meaning, not voice as such, but meaning in Dies Natalis is not easy to grasp. Calm stillness underpins the ecstasy, for the cycle repeatedly refers to sublimation over ego and the sense of self. "I saw all in the peace of Eden. Everything was at rest, immortal and divine".

From Rhapsody to Rapture. This cycle often works best when sung by a tenor, emphasizing the strange, unconventional spirituality. "Sweet Infancy!" does not refer to babies, but to the idea of birth.. Perhaps for Finzi with his beliefs in organic farming and living in harmony with nature,  it's a statement of faith in something more primeval, the very force of life itself.  Finzi was way ahead of his time.

"When silent I, so many thousand, thousand Years beneath the Dust did in a Chaos lie, How could I Smiles, or Tears, or Lips or Hands or Eyes perceive " (Traherne's upper case).  Most definitely this isn't a human baby, nor even baby Jesus. Long before science developed theories about the Big Bang and primordial soup Traherne intuited the idea of the birth of the cosmos. Dies Natalis explores new territory, completely alien to the certainities of the established Church. Indeed, the very idea of faith is challenged. Fundamental to this cycle is the sense of wonder, of seeing the world anew through absolutely pure, unbiased eyes. Even Jesus had an agenda when he became Man. Finzi creates a  Being without any consciouness other than the sheer miracle of existence.  "A Stranger here, strange things doth meet, strange Glory see......Strange all and new to me, but that they MINE should be ...who Nothing was, That strangest is, of all, yet brought to pass". 

Recording recommendations - Wilfrid Brown, schoolteacher to Finzi's sons, (1955) and Ian Bostridge ( 1997)

ENO The Pilgrim's Progress Ralph Vaughan Williams

The ENO production of The Pilgrim's Progress is a historic moment. This is what the ENO should stand for - pioneering good opera in English. This justifies the whole premise of the ENO philosophy.  For sixty years, The Pilgrim's Progress has suffered under the mistaken assumption that it is somehow "unstageable". Yoshi Oida and the ENO prove, indisputably, that it can be brought to vivid life and be restored to its deserved place in the repertoire. As Bunyan sings "This book will make a Traveller of thee". The "end" of the opera is just the beginning.

The Pilgrim's Progress  is a remarkable work that defies classification. Do not approach it as conventional opera, or you'll miss its fundamental originality. Vaughan Williams hiumself called it a "Morality", not quite a morality play in the medieval tradition, but much more sophisticated.
Approach it from  an oratorio background and you're on stronger ground. Yet Vaughan Williams was adamant that it was "essentially a stage piece, and not for a cathedral". These considerations are important, for they affect the way the Pilgrim's Progress can be staged. Vaughan Williams wasn't happy with the 1951 Covent Garden production., but I think he'd be pleased with Yoshi Oida's staging for the ENO because it blends Bunyan's steadfast beliefs with Vaughan Williams's distinctive artistic personality.

The Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory, progressing in ritual stages as spartan as the militant non-conformist Protestantism that inspired it. The action evolves in the Pilgrim's soul as he visualizes his journey. Thus the bizarre names of those he meets, like his neighbours Pliable, Obstinate, Mistrust and Timorous. They are not real people but symbols. Oida and his designer depict them holding banners, alluding to the illustrations in typical 17th century religious tracts. Lord Hate-Good and Pontius Pilate are meant to be caricatures, as Bunyan's readers knew their Bible word by heart and understood how it applied to The Pilgrim. Perhaps modern audiences don't make quite the same connection between the Pilgrim's fate and that of his Lord, but again that is absolutely fundamental to meaning.

Bunyan was a non-conformist independent at a time of extreme religious intolerance. He wasn''t  Establishment, he wasn't dutiful Church of England.  He came from peasant stock and probably spole with a broad Midlands accent. Vaughan Williams is making a very specific point by explicitly framing the opera with references to Bunyan and later The Pilgrim in prison. It is not stylistic licence on Oida's part but fundamental to meaning. Furthermore, it's not simply a matter of poet in prison, but the concept that mankind is imprisoned until freed by spiritual awakening. The Pilgrim cannot attain grace unless he dies in faith. Oida's Pilgrim dies in the electric chair. Bunyan refers to a river of death. Electricity is a flowing current, so death is a quick transition, fitting well with Vaughan Williams's musical setting. Visually, the image is powerful because it also suggests the idea of sitting on a throne in judgement, for like God, Bunyan condemns the venal. "If this man cannot stand before the judgement of men, how shall he stand before the judgement of God?" Oida also show the river in a film projection above the stage, a detail which reinforces the depth of his interpretation.

Ralph Vaughan Williams was not Bunyan. He affirms Bunyan's basic principles but moderates them with his music.  RVW's glorious interludes add radiant lyricism, conducted by Martyn Brabbins so that the radiance is almost overwhelming.  Brabbins's understanding of RVW's idiom is profound, sharp and never sentimental. RVW's "pastoralism" isn't bucolic fantasy but "pastoral" in the wider meaning of the word, ideally suited to this piece with its implicit message of faith in the Good Shepherd. The Pilgrim sings" I will walk in the name of the Lord, my strength", and the colours in the orchestra illuminate the words, as if the Lord is walking invisibly with the Pilgrim. RVW's Interludes tell the story so vividly that the orchestra provides much of the drama the text alone eschews. In House Beautiful, the Pilgrim listens to angelic voices "Music in the house, music in the heart, music in heaven".

There are many references to Vaughan Williams's other music, especially the Fifth Symphony, since he laboured over The Pilgrim's Progress for many years. Indeed, The Pilgrim's Progress can e read as Vaughan Williams own spiritual journey. He put his failth in music, not in God. Listen to the entr'acte before the Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains, where the melody is bathed in the simple light of solo violin reminiscent of The Lark Ascending. Oida's staging captures RVW's music with remarkable sensitivity.  The prison paraphernalia (designed by Tom Schenk) moves swiftly, respecting the momentum of the music. Glowing colours of copper and amber, verdigris and subtle shadow : natural earth tones that reflect the music and also the idea of organic change that runs through the whole piece. This is why The Pilgrim's Progress is infinitely improved by visual images.  Most of us have grown up with audio versions. Now my love for this work is enhanced by recalling this production.  Even when Oida slightly  controversially uses film images of  First World War trenches to contrast with "God's straight highway", he is referring to RVW's career. Indeed, RVW seems to have made the connection himself, given the strident trumpet parts that accompany the text. That war was a watershed (his "river"?) for him and he did not forget.
 
This is a much deeper production than one might expect. It is an infiniutely greater homage to the composer than the superficial  ENO Riders to the Sea, or well meaning but limited productions of Hugh the Drover. Oida might even make The Poisoned Kiss work nicely.

Martyn Brabbins is another reason for catching this production, sharper than Adrian Boult, livelier than Richard Hickox. This should be immortalized on DVD.  It would create a new market, especially for those who don't as yet appreciate RVW.  Roland Wood sings both John Bunyan and The Pilgrim, but combining the roles means he is singing for hours on end. It's more conducive to stamina than finesse. A beautiful voice isn't necessary in an opera about a tough minded anti-materialist. It's enough that Wood can to carry it off convincingly, especially considering that there are several other British baritones who would have been outstanding. Wood is valiant, but he's young and doesn't make his ROH debut until 2014. He's worth hearing again, though. Some of the finest singing occured in the minor roles.  Several excellent vignettes - Eleanor Dennis (especially as the Voice of the Bird), with Kitty Whateley and Aoife O'Sullivan, Timothy Robinson, Mark Richardson,  and many members of the cast and chorus in Vanity Fair.

New Life for Hugh the Drover

Is English Opera an oxymoron? (other than Benjamin Britten). "Imagine a tuneful eighteenth-century “ballad opera” of country life, say Stephen Storace’s enduringly popular No Song No Supper, cross it with Cavalleria Rusticana, throw in a bit of Rocky for good measure, and you have some idea of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s first opera, Hugh the Drover, a “Romantic Ballad Opera.” writes David Chandler in Opera Today.

Don't laugh too soon! Please read the full review here because it's a erudite analysis on what makes an opera work. 

Hugh the Drover would be ridiculous as Grand Opera, but on its own terms there's more to it than reputation would have. The secret is in performances like the recent production by Hampstead Garden Opera, Upstairs at the Gatehouse. "They do not send it up, but they “sub-reference” the audience, to use Charles Lamb’s term, just enough to say “look, this is all tremendous fun, and we’re really enjoying ourselves.”  

Context is all. Not long ago, the Royal Opera House considered English operas but dropped plans discreetly. It wasn't cost, but artistic good sense. Even Sir John in Love or A Village Romeo and Juliet wouldn't work in a space more suited to Wagner or Verdi. Why doesn't ENO do more English opera instead of opera in English? The Coliseum has connections with the English Music Hall tradition, and is small enough to suit the domestic nature of the English style. RVW's Riders to the Sea was popular, though it was treated much more as the J M Synge stage play with music than as the opera it is. That's the usual ENO hang-up about theatre rather than music. If the ENO could do musically-literate English opera, that would be a real challenge.

Frenchmen steal show Cambridge Prom 8 2009

One Proms tradition rarely acknowledged is sour, nitpicking peevishness, which often reflects the nitpicker's hang-ups rather than what actually happens. So there were plenty of "big numbers" in this Prom to quiet those who think massiveness equals art. Women composers, modern composers, British composers, hundreds of choristers en masse, everything to satisfy the carpers. But did it work?

This Prom celebrates the 800th anniversary of Cambridge University, so it was a Prom of substance since Cambridge was a cradle of 19th century British music which Charles Villiers Stanford dominated by sheer force of personality. Like Nadia Boulanger, he was an autocrat who taught well but perhaps stifled creative spirits who didn't toe the line.

Significantly, Elgar and Delius didn't go to Cambridge, so he certainly wasn't the guiding force behind top-rank British music. If Stanford "changed the course of British music" as has been suggested, it wasn't necessarily for the best. Strange that this Prom didn't feature Hubert Parry, stomped on by Stanford but less up himself than Stanford, and loved by many. Still, British music owes Stanford. It would be interesting to hear a programme of Stanford students (who included the much underestimated Rebecca Clarke) but it might be as dull as boiled mutton and tweed in high summer, if not chosen well.

Ralph Vaughan Williams was politely circumspect about Stanford, but only really found his own voice when he went briefly to France. As did Gustav Holst. So perhaps we should be celebrating Ravel? The Wasps isn't mature RVW but already you can hear the composer moving away from Victorian values. Ryan Wigglesworth makes much of rampant borrowings in his Genesis of Secrecy, so perhaps the idea is to puzzle listeners into looking for hidden clues. Maybe that's why it sounds familiar even though it's the first of this year's Proms commissions. I'd prefer something more distinctive, but this will please those who don't normally like new music.

All the more to celebrate RVW's Five Mystical Songs. The moment Simon Keenlyside starts "Rise up, heart, they Lord is risen", it feels like RVW is into that "unknown region" which makes a composer individual. RVW links to English music traditions long before the Victorian age, and finds inspiration for the new. Sixteen Cambridge College choirs, and the mighty Royal Albert Hall organ behind Keenlyside: this was truly impressive. And to think of that Antiphon, with its glorious cries "Let all the world in ever'y corner sing, My Lord and King" pouring out of radios and PCs to every corner of the globe. This was a true Proms moment, even for those who don't believe in the same Lord or in any lord at all.

Stanford's Magnificat and Nunc Dimitis then had its Proms premiere, 130 years after it was written. Perhaps wisely, as this piece really needs garguantuan forces to make it work. It's basically plainchant but inflated to grandiose proportions, worlds away from the spirit of early music. Fortunately, the choirs of Clare, Gonville and Caius, and Trinity have the polish to carry it off with style but it's not a work to hear otherwise. But better this than other Stanford, because it fits better with the rest of the Prom and the idea of elaborate religious display.

Another Prom premiere, next, Jonathan Harvey's Come, Holy Ghost from 1984. Harvey was BBC "Composer of the Week", so I listened dutifully, but confess I don't get this composer no matter how I try. Growing up with the Catholic Mass and "world music" ought to make me sympathetic, but it seems to have the opposite effect. More involving was Judith Weir's Ascending into Heaven (1983), also a Proms First, with Thomas Trotter at the organ. But then I like Weir and her down-to-earth sense of humour.

Plenty of other Cambridge-connected composers might have fiilled this Prom (Ireland, Julian Anderson, Alexander Goehr, Hugh Wood etc) but it was just as well the finale was Camille Saint-Saëns's Organ Symphony. Saint-Saëns's Cambridge connection is nominal but this work stole the show. Last year, Myun-whun Ching conducted this at the Proms, with Olivier Latry. After an overwhelmingly powerful Messiaen Et exspecto resurrectionum mortuorum it was overshadowed. See description HERE. In this Prom, it overshadowed all that went before. When the Royal Albert Hall organ exploded into full glory, with Thomas Trotter at the helm, it was Saint-Saëns who stole the show.

Gerald Finzi's New Year's Eve Epiphany

Chosen Hill in Gloucestershire is one of those "power spots" which attract creative energy. In the early 1920's, shy, repressed Gerald Finzi started to visit. He met up with Detmar Blow and other arts and crafts types, who introduced him to exotic things like yoghurt and alternative living. In many ways, Finzi's life was an extension of the William Morris ideal.

Ivor Gurney used to come here most days, walking the 5 miles from Gloucester each way. But it was worth it – from this hill there's a panoramic view across the Cotswolds, only broken by mists on the horizon (or smog). At the top of the hill is a church tower, dangerously poised on a cliff – parts are now blocked off. Below is a tiny cottage, low slung, almost invisble from the road. On New Year's Eve, 1925, Finzi went to a party in the cottage. At midnight, they came outside, into sharp frost, the night sky filled with stars, and "heard bells ringing across Gloucestershire from beside the Severn to the hill villages of the Cotswolds".

Stephen Banfield, Finzi's biographer, calls this the "hilltop epiphany", for it released in Finzi a surge of original music. This was the inspiration for In Terra Pax and Nocturne whose sub-title is in fact New Year's Music, filled with bells and joy. Finzi needed an impetus to find himself and something happened that night under the stars. "I love New Year's Eve," he told a friend later, "Though it's the saddest time of the year..... a time of silence and quiet". And soon after asked himself "must knowledge come to me, if comes at all, by some awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by the familiar process (of reading other's work)?" ie Finzi was learning to trust his own artistic instincts.

Chosen Hill remained so dear to Finzi that nearly 30 years later, he took Ralph Vaughan Williams up the steep hill. The new tenants of the cottage had small kids. Finzi, weakened by cancer, caught their illness and died three weeks later.

In Terra Pax was also the last piece Finzi conducted, on 6th September, at the Three Choirs Festival (which is how he and RVW came to be on Chosen Hill that week)

"A frosty Xmas Eve, when the stars were shining
Fared I forth alone, where westward falls the hill,
And from many a village in the water'd valley,
Distant music reached me, peals of bells a-ringing"

Then an angel appears and sings "Fear not, fear not, fear not!" and the choir bursts into a song like multi layered pealing of bells, the orchestra throwing out chords like shards of light.

"The old words came to me by the riches of time,
Mellowed and transfigured as I stood on the hill,
Harkening in the aspect of th'eternal silence"

sings the baritone, and the choir sings "Peace, goodwill towards all men".

Sibelius Luonnotar

Shell shocked still by news of the death of Richard Hickox. In tribute the ENO is going ahead with RVW's Riders to Sea, which was meant to be the culmination of this RVW commemoration year. Never did we dream the year would end with the loss of one of the great RVW conductors. (and Tod Handley died this year too)

The opera is very short, so it's being paired with Sibelius's Luonnotar, one of the most remarkable pieces ever written. Strangely enough a lot of the pre publicity material barely mentions it, or even the opera. In fact, it's referred to as "nature spirit" as if it were some new, unknown work! A bit like referring to Siegfried as "naughty boy". Or Wotan as Daddy God. ENO has strange faith in using directors who know and care nothing about music, but really this says something..... But Luonnotar is such an unusual work it repays thinking about and listening to in depth.

"..... It transcends both song and symphonic form. Fiendishly difficult to perform, this unique piece needs an appreciation of the very unusual mind that shaped it. Sibelius was at a crossroads. With his Fourth Symphony he was reaching towards new horizons but hadn’t quite come to terms with their implications. While he kept up with Schoenberg and the modernists, he had long realised that he was not part of the German tradition. He knew he was approaching uncharted waters and the prospect was daunting. As so often before, he turned to the ur-source of Finnish mythology for inspiration.

Luonnotar was the Spirit of Nature, Mother of the Seas, who existed before creation, floating alone in the universe before the worlds were made "in a solitude of ether". Descending to earth she swam in its primordial ocean for 700 years. Then a storm blows up and in torment, she calls to the god Ukko for help. Out of the Void, a duck flies, looking for a place to nest. Luonnotar takes pity and raises her knee above the waters so the duck can nest and lay her eggs. But when the eggs hatch they emit great heat and Luonnotar flinches. The eggs are flown upwards and shatter, but the fragments become the skies, the yolk sunlight, the egg white the moon, the mottled bits the stars. This was the creation myth of the Karelians who represented the ancient soul of the Finnish cultural identity.

The Kalevala was a motherlode for Sibelius, and he adapted it in a strikingly individual way. The orchestra may play modern instruments and the soprano may wear an evening gown, but ideally they should convey the power of ancient, shamanistic incantation, as if by recreating by sound they are performing a ritual to release some kind of creative force. The Kalevala was sung in a unique metre, which shaped the runes and gave them character, so even if the words shifted from singer to singer, the impact would be similar. Sibelius does not replicate the metre though his phrases follow a peculiar, rhythmic phrasing that reflects runic chant. Instead we have Sibelius’s unique pulse. In my jogging days, I’d run to pieces like Night Ride and Sunrise, finding the swift, "driving" passages uncommonly close to heart and breathing rhythms. It felt very organic, as if the music sprang from deep within the body. This pulse underpins Luonnotar too, giving it a dynamism that propels it along. They contrast with the big swirling crescendos, walls of sonority, sometimes with glorious harp passages that evoke the swirling oceans.

But it is the voice part which is astounding. Technically this piece is a killer – there are leaps and drops of almost an octave within a single word. When Luonnotar calls out for help, her words are scored like strange, sudden swoops of unworldly sounds supposed to resound across the eternal emptiness. These hint of the wailing, keening style that Karelian singers used. This cannot be sung with any trace of conservatoire trained artifice: the sounds are supposed to spring from primeval forces. After the duck approaches in a quite delightful passage of dancing notes, the goddess who expresses agony for its predicament. Those cries of "Ei! Ei!" – and their echo – sound avant-garde even by modern standards. The breath control required for this must be formidable. Singing over the cataclysmic orchestral climax that builds up from "Tuuli kaatavi, tuuli kaatavi!" must be quite some challenge. The sonorous wall of sound Sibelius creates is like the tsunami described in the text, and the soprano is riding on its crest.

Luonnotar is a complex creature, godlike and childlike at the same time, strong enough to survive eons of floating in ravaged seas, yet gentle enough to cradle a hapless duck. The singer needs to convey that raw primal energy, yet also somehow show the kindness and humour. The sheer physical stamina of singing this tour de force probably accounts for its relative rarity on the concert platform. Luonnotar swam underwater for centuries, so a soprano attempting this must pray for "swimmers lungs".

The last passages in the piece are brooding, strangely shaped phrases which again seem to reflect runic chanting, as if the magical incantation is building up to fulfilment. And indeed, when the creation of the stars is revealed, the orchestra explodes in a burst of ecstasy. The singer recounts the wonder, with joy and amazement: "Tähiksi taivaale, ne tähiksi taivaale". ("They became the stars in the heavens!"). I can just imagine a singer eyes shining with excitement at this point - and with relief, too, that she’s survived! As Erik Tawaststjerna said, "the soprano line is built on the contrast between … the epic and narrative and the atmospheric and magical".

In his minimalist text, Sibelius doesn’t tell us that Luonnotar goes on to carve out the oceans, bays and inlets and create the earth as we know it, or tell us that she became pregnant by the storm and gave birth later to the first man. But understanding this piece helps to understand Sibelius’s work and personality. Like the goddess, he was struggling with creative challenges and beset by self-doubt and worry. Perhaps through exploring the ancient symbolism of the Kalevala, he was able in some way to work out some ideas: in Luonnotar, I can hear echoes of the great blocks of sound and movement in the equally concise and to the point Seventh Symphony. The year after Luonnotar, Sibelius was to explore ocean imagery again in The Oceanides, whose Finnish title is Aallottaret, or "Spirit of the Waves", just as Luonnotar was the Spirit of Nature, tossed by waves. The Oceanides, written for a lucrative commission from the United States, is a more popular work, and beautiful, but doesn’t have quite the unconventional intensity and uniqueness of Luonnotar. Soon after, the First World War broke out, and the Finnish War of Independence, and Sibelius’ life changed yet again.

Luonnotar was written for, and premiered by the great Finnish soprano, Aino Ackté. Given that she was a diva, I’m not sure what she would have made of the grittier aspects of the piece, but she was a Finnish nationalist after all, and knew its implications. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was another early champion. When she sang it in Helsinki in 1955, she was moved to say that it was the "best thing she had ever done in her life". It was also central to the repertoire of Elisabeth Söderström, who was so deeply attuned to the composer’s idiom. Her recording, made with Ashkenazy, was for years the best version readily available, and remains a classic. The real Luonnotar of our time is Soile Isokoski who has made it her trademark. She sings it frequently : the finest performance sadly not recorded, though the two that are, are worth seeking out.

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2007/Mar07/Luonnotar.htm