Vaughan Williams - Songs of Travel: Songs and Chamber Works
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Label: Chandos
Cat No: CHAN10969
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Vocal/Choral
Release Date: 5th January 2018
Contents
Works
Hymns (4) for tenor, viola obbligato and pianoOrpheus with his lute
Rhosymedre (arr. Richard Morrison)
Romance for viola and piano
Silent Noon
Songs of Travel (9)
Studies in English Folksong (6)
The Sky above the Roof
The Winter's Willow
Artists
James Gilchrist (tenor)Philip Dukes (viola)
Anna Tilbrook (piano)
Works
Hymns (4) for tenor, viola obbligato and pianoOrpheus with his lute
Rhosymedre (arr. Richard Morrison)
Romance for viola and piano
Silent Noon
Songs of Travel (9)
Studies in English Folksong (6)
The Sky above the Roof
The Winter's Willow
Artists
James Gilchrist (tenor)Philip Dukes (viola)
Anna Tilbrook (piano)
About
This album captures the composer’s love for both the voice and the viola, bringing together five works for tenor and piano, two for tenor, viola, and piano, and two works for viola and piano alone. Central to the recording is the fresh, invigorating, and at times reflective cycle Songs of Travel, composed between 1901 and 1904, of special interest is also an arrangement of ‘Rhosymedre’ by the chief music critic of The Times, Richard Morrison, recorded here for the first time and performed by the same forces who gave the premiere of the arrangement in St John’s Smith Square in 2016, to critical acclaim.
Sound/Video
Paused
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1Songs of Travel - I. The Vagabond
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2Songs of Travel - II. Let Beauty Awake
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3Songs of Travel - III. The Roadside Fire
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4Songs of Travel - IV. Youth and Love
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5Songs of Travel - V. In Dreams
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6Songs of Travel - VI. The Infinite Shining
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7Songs of Travel - VII. Whither must I wander?
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8Songs of Travel - VIII. Bright is the rinng of words
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9Songs of Travel - IX. I have trod the upward and the downward slope
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10Six Studies in English Folk Song - I. Adagio
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11Six Studies in English Folk Song - II. Andante sostenuto
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12Six Studies in English Folk Song - III. Larghetto
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13Six Studies in English Folk Song - IV. Lento
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14Six Studies in English Folk Song - V. Andante tranquillo
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15Six Studies in English Folk Song - VI. Allegro vivace
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16The Sky Above the Roof
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17Orpheus with his Lute
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18Silent Noon
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19The Winter's Willow
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20Romance for viola and piano
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21Rhosymedre (arr Richard Morrison)
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22Four Hymns - I. Lord! come away!
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23Four Hymns - II. Who is this fair one?
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24Four Hymns - III. Come Love, come Lord
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25Four Hymns - IV. Evening Hymn
Europadisc Review
The main work here is the Songs of Travel, nine settings of poems from the eponymous Robert Louis Stevenson collection of 1896, composed in 1901-04 when Vaughan Williams was in his early 30s. Though tinged with melancholy and nostalgia, these are essentially youthful works, whose mixture of passion and reflection makes them constantly rewarding. Usually they are performed in the original setting for lower voice (alto or baritone), but here tenor James Gilchrist makes a powerful case for the higher voice version, which seems to add an extra level of intensity and ardour. Gilchrist brings not just vast experience but also a wide range of dynamic and tonal shading to these songs, as well as an unfailing feel for their tender lyricism. And he is superbly partnered by pianist Anna Tilbrook (with whom he has worked for over twenty years): her playing is an ideal combination of sensitive support and evocative colour - just listen to the gloriously shimmering opening of ‘Let Beauty awake’, or the effervescence of ‘The Roadside Fire’.
At the other end of the disc stand the Four Hymns for tenor, viola and voice of 1912-14, meditative reflections on symbolic hymn texts in which tenor and viola stand in complementary relationship and combine with the piano to create some magical textures. Culminating in the splendid bell-like ostinatos of the ‘Evening Hymn’ (‘O gladsome Light’), these performances capture a sense of ecstatic spiritual wonder, with seasoned viola virtuoso Philip Dukes bringing his own richly-timbred textures to the Gilchrist-Tilbrook partnership.
Dukes gets his own spot in the limelight with the epigrammatic Six Studies in English Folk Song (1926), but also in the rather more expansive, impassioned Romance: probably composed for Lionel Tertis in the mid-1930s, it is the latest music on the disc, and bears all the hallmarks of Vaughan Williams’s maturity. Dukes and Tilbrook are ideal champions in a performance full of colour and passion which punches well above its weight in terms of expressive power.
Gilchrist and Tilbrook offer four further individual song settings: Orpheus with his Lute (1902), Silent Noon (1903), The Winter’s Willow (1903) and The Sky above the Roof (1908), the last being an unusually rewarding and effective Verlaine translation which seems to benefit from Vaughan Williams’s recent studies with Ravel in Paris. All are performed with exquisite sensitivity and an unerring feel for the idiom. Finally, acting as a prelude to the Four Hymns, Gilchrist, Dukes and Tilbrook combine forces for a recent arrangement by Richard Morrison of the second of RVW’s Three Preludes founded on Welsh Hymn-tunes (1920). In Morrison’s arrangement, Rhosymedre has a surprisingly contemporary feel to it, with a gentle but definite swing to its step. As with all the works on this absorbing disc, it benefits enormously from the supreme but unassuming musicianship of the three performers.
The recording, from Potton Hall in Suffolk, is of Chandos’s usual high standard, and the generous documentation includes commentary and full texts. For lovers of British music and the art of song, this can be enthusiastically recommended.
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