This recording was
made in 1989, when English song was
undergoing one of its periodic renaissances.
Thompson and Varcoe and Martyn Hill
were the leading lights of the era.
In recent years English song has attracted
a wider audience and inspired a new
generation of interpreters. Nonetheless
the recordings of the ’seventies and
’eighties still remain important. Even
today, Ivor Gurney is a composer under-represented
in the recording catalogue, despite
his significance. Many Gurney songs
are available, notably Paul Agnew's
‘Severn Meadows’ collection, also on
Hyperion (CDA 67423), but this reissue
is the only readily available compilation
of his major song cycles.
Vaughan Williams' On
Wenlock Edge is justifiably the
greatest masterpiece in the canon of
English song: it has been performed
and recorded so often that a listener
is spoilt for choice. Superlative versions
abound. Two comparisons suffice. My
special favourite is Ian Bostridge's
recording of the 1924 orchestral version,
conducted by Bernard Haitink and the
London Philharmonic Orchestra (1997)
reissued in 2004 by EMI as part of a
budget box of all Haitink's Vaughan
Williams recordings (it includes all
the symphonies). This version, for me,
is outstanding because Bostridge's interpretation
captures the almost surreal emotion
in the verses and lifts them beyond
the literal. The full import of Housman's
text is revealed as seldom before. One
can feel the ghost of the Roman on the
modern hillside, the bells on Bredon
take on a manic, almost sinister tone,
to match the grief of the man bereft.
That recording is in a class of its
own, and unequalled. A more appropriate
comparison would be the recording by
John Mark Ainsley and the Nash Ensemble
(2000 ) also Hyperion, CDA 67168). This
is the chamber version produced in 1913,
the score used in the Thompson/Delmé
recording under review. Alas, the Ainsley/Nash
version is outstanding, far outshining
this effort by Thompson/Delmé.
Adrian Thompson is a pleasant enough
singer, but lacks the interpretive bite
that Ainsley and Bostridge bring: his
voice is attractive but nothing out
of the ordinary. The Delmé Quartet
are good, but not quite in the same
league of elegance and artistry.
The real value of this
reissue lies in the Gurney song cycles.
The Western Playland and Ludlow
and Teme were republished only in
1982, and deserve to be better known.
Both are for voice, piano and chamber
quartet. Some of the songs therein have
been set far more famously by George
Butterworth and Ralph Vaughan Williams:
Loveliest of trees for example,
whose setting by Butterworth is so beautiful
that it would take a setting of genius
to displace. Yet Gurney's version, holds
its own, garlanded with a solo violin,
whose sensuous shimmering line evokes
the shining blossom. Where Butterworth
stresses the tree "wearing white
.... for Eastertide", Gurney emphasises
the "white". A minor point perhaps,
but Butterworth seems more aware of
the impermanence of the blossom, while
Gurney glories in its beauty while it
lasts. Gurney's Is my team ploughing?
is also quite different from the
well known Butterworth and Vaughan Williams
settings. No conversation with a ghost
here - Gurney's deceased ploughman still
sings with the vigour he had in life,
albeit ever so discordantly. Butterworth's
version of The lads in their hundreds
has become immortal as a sort of
symbolic evocation of the millions killed
in the First World War, as Butterworth
himself was. Gurney's version again,
is seemingly heartier: the third stanza,
though, is set quite differently: "I
wish one could know them, I wish there
were tokens to tell". Gurney's On
the idle Hill of Summer is, like
Butterworth's, quite singular. Gurney
subtly emphasizes the "steady drummer,
drumming like the noise in dreams"
- a detail but a telling one, this "noise
in dreams". Gurney's music may sound
superficially confident, but it is the
confidence of "whistling in a graveyard":
grim undertones are there, less obvious
than in Butterworth or Vaughan Williams,
but there nonetheless. Gurney, being
a poet himself, was perhaps more aware
of letting words speak, and making the
listener think. He didn't need overly
explicit musical settings.
Too much comparison
with Butterworth and Vaughan Williams
does no favours to any composer: Gurney's
own voice is distinctive on its own.
Gurney's Far Country, set in
a minor key with keening strings is
a "land of lost content" indeed,
whose "blue remembered hills"
truly send an "air that kills",
a sliver of a verse augmented by restrained
but evocative strings. He starts When
smoke stood up from Ludlow with
an almost oriental air, exploring the
pentatonic in a way that Vaughan Williams
would have envied. It enhances the mysticism
of the dialogue between the blackbird
and the ploughman. It is pure coincidence
that when the ploughman kills the blackbird,
he takes up the bird’s song as his own
- a Buddhist concept Gurney or Housman
would have been unaware of. The detail
is exquisite - between "whistled"
and "the tramping" in the second
verse, a single phrase on violin evokes
birdsong. When the bird is killed, the
voice sings "still....." with
pregnant silence. A similar sense of
ambience pervades The Lent Lily.
If scented spring air could be portrayed
in sound, this, perhaps, might be what
it might sound like. Voice, strings
and piano undulate and entwine melodically:
the words "Easter day" fade out,
like a breeze wafting forth, carried
away by swaying strings and restrained
low notes on the piano ...
Thompson and Varcoe
are good performers who present these
songs well and clearly. Songs as evanescent
as these need a light touch. Nonetheless,
I hope that, from the current generation
of singers of English song, there will
be new interpretations of these beautiful,
expressive songs.
Anne Ozorio
for details
Adrian Thompson (tenor), (1); Stephen Varcoe
(baritone) (2); The Delmé Quartet
(1)and (2); Iain Burnside (piano) (1) and
(2) 
