This new issue in the
Naxos British Choral Music series
goes head to head with the same coupling
on a vintage EMI mid-price reissue:
Barry Rose conducting the Fantasia
and David Willcocks’ version of Hodie
on 5 67427-2. Rose’s version of the
Fantasia was recorded with Guildford
Cathedral Choir; there seems to be some
kind of mystic connection between this
work and Guildford. Another, full-price,
EMI recording of the same coupling under
Richard Hickox (CDC7 54128 2, rec.1990,
DDD) has been deleted.
The Fantasia
is a work with a ready appeal, effectively
a catena of Christmas Carols
for baritone soloist, choir and orchestra,
with bells and organ at the climax.
Though fairly well-known today, the
four main carols would have been comparatively
little-known in 1912. One comes from
the collection of Cecil Sharp, to whom
the Fantasia is fittingly dedicated;
the others were collected by RVW himself
in Herefordshire and Sussex. Better-known
tunes, such as The First Nowell,
flit in and out of the texture.
I openly admit to having
a soft-spot for this kind of updated
early or traditional music: the Fantasia
has the same kind of appeal for me as
Rodrigo’s Fantasia para un Gentilhombre
or Stravinsky’s Pulcinella or
Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances
and Gli Uccelli.
Hodie, on the
other hand, has never been one of my
favourite RVW works. Much as I love
even his less well-known music, such
as the delectable Oxford Elegy,
I have to admit that I have always found
Hodie something of a bore. The
opening, in the rumbustious manner of
the Tudor Portraits, gets my
attention but the rest of the work rather
outstays its welcome – at least in the
Hickox version.
It has always seemed
to me that the Fantasia would
be more logically coupled with Victor
Hely-Hutchinson’s Carol Symphony
which was, if I remember aright, the
original LP coupling for the Barry Rose
version. Naxos, however, already have
a version of this work in their catalogue
(8.557099) coupled with Patric Standford’s
Carol Symphony and other works,
of which my fellow Musicweb reviewer
Neil
Horner wrote "This is a lovely
Christmas collection of lighter orchestral
music, overseen by Gavin Sutherland
who can do little wrong in this sort
of repertoire."
So how does the new
version of the Fantasia compare
with existing versions? Does the new
version of Hodie persuade me
more than the Hickox version? Hilary
Davan Wetton and the Guildford Choral
Society were jointly responsible for
the rather unsatisfactory Hyperion version
of RVW’s Mystical Songs and Tudor
Portraits (see below) so I came
with no very great expectations.
Before trying to answer
those questions, I listened, as usual,
to the CD once through without making
notes. First impressions were very positive:
two idiomatic performances, lively where
appropriate, lyrical and thoughtful
too in the right places, all in a wide-ranging
recording. My attention still wandered
occasionally in places in Hodie,
but the strength of the performance
soon regained it. The rousing performance
of the Epilogue, In the beginning
was the Word, is particularly vividly
recorded.
The mysterious cello
opening of the Fantasia is well
handled both on Naxos and on the EMI/Hickox
recording: on both it seems to arise
from nowhere, a little more magically
on EMI than on Naxos, where the sound
is slightly more forward. Stephen Gadd
(Naxos) is a much darker-hued baritone
than Stephen Roberts (EMI); both are
a little ponderous at first, needing
to warm up like the poor tenor who has
the first aria in Handel’s Messiah.
Roberts’ voice seems to arise from nowhere
like the opening cello solo and increase
in volume as he progresses. Gadd comes
in louder from the start and his measured
tones don’t quite float as they should
over the quiet choral background in
the first carol, This is the Truth.
Almost inevitably, both singers stress
unimportant words like ‘which’ and ‘and’;
no-one would mistake either for a folk-singer
but the music forces them to obey some
folk-music conventions.
The pace increases
as the choir take up the second carol,
Come all ye worthy gentlemen.
In On Christmas night the baritone
re-enters; the music is livelier now
and Gadd rises to the occasion, but
Roberts again has a slight edge on him.
In the final God bless the ruler
of this house, measured tones are
again called for. If anything, Roberts
is the more measured here. After the
climax with bells and organ – neither
of them exactly bursting through the
sound-palette on either recording –
the music dies away as it began. Both
versions handle this well.
The Guildford Choir
(Naxos) sound a little too backward
throughout. This may be due to the recording
balance, or it may simply be that they
lack the power of the St Paul’s choristers
(EMI) who are more forward where it
matters.
Hickox takes 18 seconds
less overall and his version has the
edge in liveliness where it matters
– more so than the mere 18 seconds difference
would suggest. The EMI recording is
lighter and more natural than the Naxos.
I don’t wish to exaggerate the shortcomings
of the Naxos performance or recording
but the score has to be something like
9 to 7 in favour of the Hickox at this
stage. If it’s just the Fantasia
that you want, it might be worth looking
in the remainders bin for a copy of
the EMI/Hickox, but the difference is
not great enough to warrant offering
silly prices on the web.
Hickox has re-recorded
the Fantasia for Chandos (CHAN10385)
in a coupling with two other RVW Christmas
pieces (not Hodie), a CD strongly
recommended by Rob
Barnett a year ago. I note from
the header of that review that he now
takes the work at a more leisurely pace,
12:19 against 11:24 on his earlier EMI
version.
The Fantasia
also features on a Classics for Pleasure
CD A Hallé Christmas,
reviewed by Christopher
Thomas, who thought the disc worthwhile
for the RVW alone: "a spirited
performance ... [with] a sensitive accompaniment."
(CFP 5 75797 2).
Amongst other recordings
of the Fantasia, only the EMI
Rose/Willcocks version couples it with
Hodie – a decent version, as
I recall from its LP incarnation, reportedly
now sounding impressive in its ADD reincarnation
– but see Rob
Barnett’s comments on the acoustic
of this version, in his review of the
Chandos/Hickox, above – and costing
just a little more than the Naxos.
Readers of the 2008
Penguin Guide should beware.
The four-star key-repertoire listing
of a bargain-price recording of the
Fantasia on CDH55044 is most
misleading. Far from containing the
Fantasia, as stated, this CD
actually offers Four Mystical Songs
and Tudor Portraits – listed
correctly at the foot of the next column
– and is, in fact, one of my very few
disappointments among Helios reissues.
The four-star Corydon Singers/Matthew
Best recording of the Fantasia,
Four Mystical Songs, Flos
Campi and Serenade to Music
is actually still at full price on CDA66420.
The 2005 edition got this right, so
it is a mystery how the error crept
in.
If the half-time score
stood in Hickox’s favour, matters are
otherwise in Hodie. There is
nothing that I can specifically fault
in the EMI version. Everything seems
in place from performers and recording
engineers. Indeed, if anything, the
EMI recording is again lighter-toned
and slightly more natural than the Naxos.
Timings for individual sections are
very similar, with Hickox marginally
faster in general. The actual difference
overall amounts to just over a minute
in a work almost an hour long.
Hodie is to
some extent a more didactic, almost
devotional work. RVW was an agnostic
in the true sense of that word, not
an atheist. The work lends itself to
Davan Wetton’s slightly more deliberate
pacing. The form mirrors that of the
familiar Nine Lessons and Carols,
itself modelled on the three nocturnes
of Matins for Christmas Day, each with
three lessons. RVW reduces the number
of lessons to seven, sung not read,
opens with words from Christmas Day
Vespers which give the piece its name:
Nowell! Nowell!
Hodie Christus natus est; hodie salvator
apparuit:
Hodie in terra canunt angeli, lætantur
archangeli:
Hodie exsultant iusti, dicentes: gloria
in excelsis Deo: Alleluia
[This day Christ is born; this day
the saviour has appeared:
This day angels sing on earth, archangels
rejoice:
This day the righteous exult, singing
Glory to God in the highest: Alleluia]
and intersperses a
wide variety of settings, ranging from
the late-medieval to words by his wife
Ursula. If the setting of Thomas Hardy’s
The Oxen chimes with RVW’s own
reluctant agnosticism, the initial Nowell!
and the Epilogue, beginning with the
opening of St John’s Gospel and concluding
with Ring out ye crystal spheres
from Milton’s Hymn on the Morning
of Christ’s Nativity, sound like
real commitment. In both performances
they come over as such but the slight
extra breadth that they receive on Naxos
underlines that sense of commitment
slightly more: 3:56 against 3:46 and
6:49 against 6:34 respectively.
Whereas EMI’s lighter
sound is more appropriate in the Fantasia,
the greater weight of the Naxos recording
is more telling in Hodie, bringing
out the relationship with the Tudor
Portraits and the Seventh Symphony,
Sinfonia Antartica. Yet it is
not too forward in the quieter moments,
such as track 3, Now the birth of
Jesus Christ. The Guildford choir
may be no match for the St Paul’s choristers
but they make a pretty good fist of
everything in Hodie. St Catherine’s
Middle School Chamber choristers also
acquit themselves well. They have tracks
5 (And it came to pass...) and
track 11 (But Mary kept all these
things ...) to themselves.
Stephen Gadd’s weightier
baritone also sounds more appropriate
here than in the Fantasia, especially
in the wistful setting of Hardy’s The
Oxen (track 8); the other soloists
are equally fine. Janice Watson blends
well with the choir in the lullaby Sweet
was the song (track 12) rising above
them just enough without drowning them.
Peter Hoare’s voice is also just right
for Bright portals (track 13)
rising almost to the heights suggested
by the opening fanfare but with a just
a hint of human fallibility.
My comparative scores
for Hodie, then, are reversed
– 9 to 7 in favour of the Naxos – admittedly,
for subjective reasons which I cannot
fully explain.
The booklet is informative
but the lack of texts is both annoying
and unusual for Naxos. Their availability
on the Naxos website only partly compensates.
There is enough space on the CD for
them to have been included there in
CD-ROM form. I could have done without
the slipcase – a fiddle to get on and
off, anyway – but not the texts.
I compared the opening
of Hodie with the Tudor Portraits.
If you have yet to make the acquaintance
of this work, settings of John Skelton,
the most scurrilous self-styled laureate
that ever was, I urge you to do so.
Hilary Davan Wetton’s version on Hyperion
Helios CDH55004 is rather under-powered
and coupled with a version of the Mystical
Songs which I also find lacking;
go for the Hickox version (Chandos CHAN9593).
Here the score was even more in favour
of Hickox than is the case in the Fantasia;
more like 9 to 6 this time. I got to
know the wonderful Portraits
in Willcocks’s LP version, briefly transferred
to CD but another victim of the deletions
axe which seems to have polished off
all his RVW recordings. What about restoring
some of them on cdr, Arkiv? Thank goodness
that Lyrita have now restored his version
of RVW’s The Sons of Light (see
Musicweb review by Christopher
Howell, with links to reviews by
Rob Barnett and John Quinn).
The wonderful Willcocks
version of the Oxford Elegy –
a Cambridge choir doing full justice
to my own alma mater – is also
currently deleted, even in the 9-CD
set which Rob
Barnett reviewed in 2003. It’s well
worth looking for the odd copy which
may be lingering in some shops: 5 67221
2 for the single CD or 5 75795 2 for
the box set. There are versions by Robert
Taylor (Centaur CRC2299) and Stephen
Darlington (Nimbus NI5166), neither
of which I have heard. I note that Hilary
Davan Wetton has recently given a concert
performance of the Oxford Elegy,
with Jeremy Irons as narrator. Perhaps
Naxos will oblige us with a recording.
If it lives up to the promise of his
Hodie, rather than his version
of the Tudor Portraits and Mystical
Songs, it should be a winner.
To return to Christmas
music, don’t forget the very special
series of Archiv recordings which I
mentioned at the end of my recent review
of Ton Koopman’s Puer Nobis Nascitur,
which I repeat here for convenience:
If you want a Christmas
CD that really knocks your socks off,
go for one of Paul McCreesh’s liturgical
reconstructions – A Venetian Christmas
on DGG 471 333-2 (music by Giovanni
Gabrieli and others), Christmas Vespers
1664 by Schütz (463 046-2)
or, even better, Lutheran Mass for
Christmas Morning (1620), featuring
the music of Prætorius and his
contemporaries (439 250-2).
Brian Wilson
Janice Watson (soprano)**; Peter Hoare
(tenor)**; Stephen Gadd (baritone)*/**;
Guildford Choral Society*/**;
St Catherine’s School Middle Chamber Choir**;
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Hilary Davan
Wetton 
