Titled
Flowers of the Field to mark Remembrance Day this Naxos
release is a fitting tribute to four composers who were greatly affected by
the First World War with one making the ultimate sacrifice. I noticed that
three of them are directly connected to Royal College of Music (RCM) and
Finzi too, indirectly, by way of his teacher. Two of the works are being
recorded here for the first time.
Setting the tone for this collection of works to honour the fallen is
A Shropshire Lad,
written and premièred before the war. Butterworth studied for a short time
at the RCM. He could possibly have had some lessons with Stanford but almost
certainly would have come under his influence anyway. Butterworth enlisted
at the outbreak of war and was shot and killed on the Somme in 1916.
A Shropshire Lad is a favourite work of mine. Under Hilary
Davan Wetton the London Mozart Players adopt a quite forceful approach. This
is not what I am used to hearing in this score where there is little in the
way of “lambkins frisking” as Vaughan Williams is reported to have said of
his
Pastoral Symphony. As the music diminishes in weight from
around point 8.29 the atmosphere created is quite magical.
One of the least known works on the release is Gerald Finzi’s
Requiem da Camera for baritone, mixed chorus and
chamber orchestra. Written mainly in 1923/24 and bearing a dedication to
memory of his teacher Ernest Farrar (who had studied with Stanford at the
RCM) who died on the Somme in 1918, Finzi left the score incomplete.
Recorded here for the first time is the new performing version, edited and
completed by Christian Alexander. Commencing with an orchestral prelude, at
the heart of the score is a setting for baritone of Thomas Hardy’s
In
Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’ framed by choral settings by John
Masefield and Wilfrid Wilson Gibson. This early Finzi work is attractive
enough and well crafted although I found little to hold my attention too
long; in truth it is fairly unmemorable. The singing of the committed City
of London Choir is commendable but cannot make something better than what it
is. There are agreeable short contributions from soprano Natasha Harbinson
and tenor David Bagnall in the second section ‘How still this quiet
cornfield is to-night’ and from soprano Emily Tidbury in section four ‘We
who are left’. In this type of repertoire baritone Roderick Williams has few
peers. His performance in section three ‘Only a man harrowing clods’ is a
highlight with singing of such telling expressive force. The Hickox
recording of an earlier edition of this work can be found on
Chandos.
Ivor Gurney, said to be Stanford’s favourite and most naturally gifted
pupil, left his studies at the RCM to enlist as soon as war broke out. In
1917 he was wounded, later gassed twice and suffered ‘shell shock’. Scarred
indelibly Gurney was certified insane and spent the last 16 years of his
life in mental institutions. It was around 1921 that Ivor Gurney wrote his
setting of Edward Thomas’s poem
The Trumpet.
Recorded here for the first time is the performing version that Philip
Lancaster has edited and orchestrated from Gurney’s short score. I was in
the audience at the first performance of Lancaster’s orchestration at Kendal
Parish Church in July 2008. In this orchestration the music washes over in a
mass of sound which is certainly not helped by a slightly cloudy recording.
I was glad to have the text in front of me as I couldn’t have followed it
from the singing alone.
Although he was of an age when he didn’t have to join up Vaughan Williams
volunteered to serve with the ambulance brigade as a driver and
stretcher-bearer in Northern France and in Salonika. He would have witnessed
the unspeakable carnage of the battlefields. Although, it has been recorded
several times (
Westbrook/Willcocks/EMI;
May/Darlington/Nimbus)
An Oxford
Elegy for narrator, small mixed chorus and small orchestra is
rarely performed today. Composed in 1947/49 at the start of the last decade
of the composer’s life the score falls roughly between the dates of his
Symphony No. 6 and the
Sinfonia Antarctica. The words were
assembled from Matthew Arnold’s poems
The Scholar-Gipsy and its
sequel
Thyrsis. This is an unusual choral work, although not
unprecedented, in that the main body of the text is undertaken by a narrator
- not a vocalist. Vaughan Williams had already written
A Song of
Thanksgiving a choral work with orchestra in 1944 which contained a
part for speaker. Other near-contemporary works in this format include
Copland’s
Lincoln Portrait and Schoenberg’s
A Survivor from
Warsaw.
Oxford Elegy is one of Vaughan Williams' least
successful works although the chorus and orchestra under Hilary Davan Wetton
do everything expected of them and perform with credit. As one might expect
celebrated actor Jeremy Irons as speaker reads impeccably with considerable
authority and with clarity. He has something of an established connection
with this work. He was the narrator in
An Oxford Elegy when it was
performed at the first of Em Marshall-Luck's
English Music
Festival in 2006 in Dorchester-on-Thames. Hilary Davan Wetton was also
the conductor on that occasion.
The sound quality is rather disappointing, certainly not as vividly clear
as my ideal especially in the choral passages, together with some fierceness
in the
forte passages. Full sung texts are provided in the booklet
and are also available as a download.
Michael Cookson
Previous review (Download News):
Brian Wilson
