United Kingdom Birthday Celebration for Ralph: Roderick Williams (baritone), Susie Allan (piano). Ivor Gurney Hall, The King’s School, Gloucester 13.11.2022. (JQ)
‘Birthday Celebration for Ralph’: songs by Vaughan Williams, Charles Wood, Ravel, Bruch, Rebecca Clarke, Grace Williams, George Butterworth, Holst, Ina Boyle, Gurney, Stanford, Ruth Gipps, Howells, Elizbeth Maconchy, Parry, Madeleine Dring, Finzi
Vaughan Williams – Songs of Travel; Meneleaus
Roderick Williams and Susie Allan got here to present this keenly anticipated recital for Gloucester Music Society in honour of Vaughan Williams’ a hundred and fiftieth anniversary. The venue was the Ivor Gurney Hall, a Victorian constructing used for a few years as a schoolroom and latterly as a small gymnasium by The King’s School. It lies proper within the shadow of Gloucester Cathedral and only a few years in the past, it was transformed right into a small auditorium, ideally suited for chamber music, and was named after one of many King’s School’s most celebrated alumni. As Roderick Williams commented when he launched the recital, it was fairly one thing to have the ability to carry out music by each Gurney and his buddy and modern, Herbert Howells within the very room wherein they’d possible been taught.
Williams defined that the programme had been designed as a ‘virtual birthday party’ for Vaughan Williams. To this occasion had been invited plenty of friends – academics, pals and pupils of VW – all of whom have been represented by a single music within the first half with plenty of VW’s personal songs scattered amongst them. This first half, which occupied practically an hour, consisted of twenty-two songs by seventeen composers, which have been carried out as an unbroken sequence. In the second half we heard VW’s cycle, Songs of Travel to which was appended a single music, Meneleaus. Fittingly, this closing merchandise was a setting of a poem by Ursula Vaughan Williams which Roderick Williams, the occasion’s genial host, wittily urged was akin to Ursula tapping her husband on the shoulder because the operate drew to a detailed and whispering that it was time to name a cab to take them residence. Before discussing the music and performances, I believe it’s applicable to say that the development of the primary half was discerning and confirmed Roderick Williams’ deep and perceptive information of the English music repertoire. He had divided the songs into plenty of small sub-groups, together with in his choice a number of gadgets that will have been unfamiliar to us within the viewers; every one justified its inclusion on benefit.
Two Tennyson settings, one by VW and one by Charles Wood, one among his academics, opened the proceedings. The Splendour Falls was an impassioned music, which singer and pianist delivered with nice élan. Wood’s Fortune and her wheel didn’t make such a powerful impression on me as a bit but it surely was nonetheless value listening to.
VWs lifelong enthusiasm for folksongs knowledgeable the subsequent group. His celebrated Linden Lea led issues off. Williams sang this in a Dorset accent, a feat which not each singer might have pulled off. I’m sure to say I wasn’t solely certain I favored this strategy but it surely was refreshing. Ravel’s Chanson Écossaise turned out to be a setting of Burns’ ‘Ye banks and braes’. For me, the chief curiosity right here lay within the piano half, impeccably and poetically performed by Susie Allan. It was fascinating to listen to within the introduction the acquainted tune arrayed in Ravelian textures and harmonies, and the piano half was a delight all through the setting. I’m not certain I’ve beforehand heard Rebecca Clarke’s Down by the Salley Gardens; it’s pleasant and Williams sang it with nice expression. George Butterworth’s ‘Roving in the dew’ is one among his Folk Songs from Sussex. It is a dialogue music, the protagonists being a complicated gentleman and a feisty milkmaid. Williams portrayed these two very completely different characters with well-judged broad humour.
Next, we heard a bunch of 5 Walt Whitman settings. Holst’s Darest thou now, O Soul units the identical phrases that VW utilized in his choral/orchestral work Toward the unknown area. Holst’s response to the textual content is way more succinct than his buddy’s – I’m wondering in the event that they in contrast notes about their respective settings throughout one among their ‘field days’ – but it surely loses nothing from being a lot shorter. It is an enormous, imposing music and the piano half, fantastically encompassed by Allan, is sort of orchestral in dimension. Williams’ singing was commanding. It was solely final 12 months that I first turned acquainted with the songs of the Irish composer, Ina Boyle due to a wonderful CD of her songs (evaluation). Boyle turned a pupil of VW in 1923 and travelled from Ireland month-to-month for a lesson till the outbreak of World War II put a cease to that. Her songs are properly value discovery and I used to be thrilled to search out that The Last Invocation was included at the moment. This predates her research with VW – she received a prize with it as a pageant in Sligo in 1913. It made a powerful impression on me after I heard the CD and it was simply as spectacular when heard reside. The music is intense and poetic, as was the efficiency by Williams and Allan. It is a really nice music. So too is VW’s A transparent midnight. Here, the piano half is akin to a sluggish processional whereas the vocal line has real the Aristocracy. Preceding that music was a Whitman setting by Ivor Gurney which has a VW hyperlink. In Reconciliation Gurney selected a poem by the American poet which VW would later set as a part of his nice cantata Dona nobis pacem. Gurney’s response to the poem is rapturous at first, later turning into way more inward. Williams was daringly expressive in his supply, particularly in the direction of the top. The Whitman group ended with Stanford’s Joy, Shipmate, Joy wherein each performers introduced out thrillingly the ardent eagerness of each phrases and music.
A few settings of George Herbert {followed}, one extraordinarily acquainted, one a lot much less so. VW’s ‘The Call’ is one among his wonderful Five Mystical Songs; it was nice to listen to it on this event. The Pulley by Ruth Gipps, a VW pupil, is a music which I heard for the primary time solely a matter of weeks in the past. It seems on a really nice new CD of English orchestral songs, all of which seem in orchestrations by Williams; on the disc in query, he’s the soloist, partnered by the Hallé and Sir Mark Elder. When I reviewed the disc I commented that I hadn’t but discovered this explicit music interesting. This reside efficiency helped vastly in that respect. It made an enormous distinction to see Williams speaking the music. Also – and I imply no disrespect to Williams’ glorious association for string orchestra – I discovered that the piano accompaniment, immaculately performed by Allan, made it simpler for me to know the music.
It was intriguing to listen to two settings of poetry by Seamus O’Sullivan aspect by aspect. VW’s The Twilight People obtained a memorably atmospheric efficiency. Howells’ The Sorrows of Love is a music that isn’t simple to know however Williams and Allan actually introduced it to life.
Finally, a number of Shakespeare settings. I wasn’t vastly taken with Elizabeth Maconchy’s The wind and the rain. It is a quick and livid setting which requires – and right here obtained – pin-point articulation from the performers. If the music itself didn’t do an awesome deal for me that didn’t imply I couldn’t admire the deft and witty efficiency. Madeleine Dring’s Take, o take these lips away is a beautiful music – and far simpler to understand. Williams sang it most expressively. Incidentally, that’s one other music which he has very efficiently orchestrated and which is included on the aforementioned CD with the Hallé. This part of the programme got here to an finish with Finzi’s peerless setting of ‘Who is Sylvia’, a part of the gathering Let us garlands carry. The efficiency was a delight
After the interval VW’s digital birthday celebration resumed. Having greeted all his fellow friends and exchanged peasantries (and songs) with them, the visitor of honour now took centre stage.
Songs of Travel (1904) is, arguably, VW’s best achievement within the subject of artwork music and so it was a extremely applicable alternative for this programme. The efficiency started auspiciously: ‘The Vagabond’ had a assured, purposeful tread, but although each Williams and Allan have been suitably sturdy, under no circumstances did they neglect the poetry within the music. Susie Allan made the piano ripple like a harp in ‘Let beauty awake’. The rapture within the music was readily obvious on this efficiency with Williams’ enviably seamless legato a determined asset. ‘Youth and love’ is a marvellous music and it was raptly carried out. Yet once more, I admired Allan’s enjoying; she weighted the piano half, with its recurring two-followed-by-three rhythm, in a great trend, permitting Williams’ voice to take to the air. The climax had all of the urgency you could possibly want to hear. This was an impressive studying of the music. In ‘The Infinite Shining Heaven’ I beloved the way in which each artists made VW’s harmonic shifts so telling, but in a delicate method. I’ve by no means understood why VW saved the ultimate music locked away in a drawer; it was solely discovered and carried out after his loss of life. His withholding of the music is most unusual as a result of ‘I have trod the upward and the downward slope’ attracts every thing collectively so completely. Not solely do Stevenson’s traces carry the cycle to a extremely satisfying conclusion but in addition VW, along with his allusions to earlier themes, wraps every thing up in a great method. Today’s efficiency mixed the Aristocracy and feeling; as soon as the singing had completed Allan’s beautiful piano postlude offered the perfect conclusion – besides that it wasn’t the conclusion. Williams and Allan moved seamlessly into Meneleaus.
This is likely one of the assortment entitled Four Last Songs. The songs, all of which set poems by Ursula Vaughan Williams, have been composed between 1954 and 1958 and have been gathered collectively right into a set by Ursula, and carried out, after her husband’s loss of life. Whereas Songs of Travel has the arrogance and eagerness of (relative) youth, Meneleaus which comes from the composer’s final years, is way more reflective in nature. It appears to me to be a specific instance of VW wanting again; within the piano half I hear a number of temporary echoes of the later symphonies, for instance. It is a really nice, autumnal music which Williams and Allan carried out with nice understanding and empathy.
This was an impressive recital. Roderick Williams was on high kind. The expressive vary in his singing and the way in which wherein he communicates along with his viewers, naturally and with out exaggeration, allows him to carry something he performs vividly to life. That was very a lot in proof at the moment. He is famend for his sensitivity to the phrases he’s singing, which he clearly research simply as intently because the music. All the texts of the songs have been printed within the programme however I can actually say that not as soon as did I really feel the necessity to have a look at the phrases, so clear was his diction. ‘Bright is the ring of words / When the right man rings them’ are the opening traces of the penultimate quantity in Songs of Travel. Today, all through the recital, we actually had the correct man ringing the phrases.
Williams and Allan have been recital companions for greater than twenty years now, and it reveals. There is a palpable inventive rapport between them, and although a substantial amount of onerous work is finished within the rehearsal room, I’m certain, they appear to have an intuitive understanding. Allan’s enjoying at the moment was a delight from begin to end, filled with notion and musicality. Together, she and Williams make a formidable musical partnership.
This was a richly rewarding and really pleasurable celebration of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ a hundred and fiftieth birthday. I didn’t have a sore head afterwards; that is one musical occasion that I received’t neglect in a rush.
John Quinn