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‘In sweet music is such art’,Vaughan Williams and Friends: Joan Rodgers (soprano), Christopher Maltman (baritone), Jack Liebeck (violin), Julius Drake (piano), Wigmore  Hall, London, 11.9.2008 (BBr)

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Three Poems by Walt Whitman (1925)
Herbert Howells: The little boy lost (1920)
O my deir hert (1920)
O garlands, hanging by the door (1920)
Girl’s song (1916)
Lost love (1934)
Blaweary (1921)

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Two Pieces for violin and piano (?1912)
Along the Field (1927 rev 1954)
Four Last Songs (1954/1958)
Gerald Finzi: 7 songs from Before and After Summer, op.16 (1932/1949)
Herbert Howells: Four French Chansons (1918/1919)
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Two English Folksongs (1935)
Two Vocal Duets (1904)


On paper this looked like a very interesting show, lots of English music, always a favourite with me, with the right singers and the pianist. And what’s more, it’s the first of a series. In practice things didn’t work out quite as well as expected: the whole programme was far too long – the removal of the Four Last Songs would have helped matters along – and there was insufficient variety, especially in the first half. Also, for some reason the piano lid was open on full stick which made the poor singers, on occasion, have to fight the sound which was immediately behind them.

But what of the music? Vaughan Williams never seemed happy, to me, when writing songs with piano accompaniment. The Songs of Travel make a good effect and are grateful to sing but there’s little substance. Likewise the three Whitman settings which opened the show. There was atmosphere a–plenty in the long first, and shorter middle setting but the final song Joy, shipmate, joy! needed much more than the composer gave it. The poet delivers a big message but VW fluffed the moment to make a major statement as the souls set sail for the afterlife. The programme note called this song a sea chanty which, if you read the words, it surely cannot be. Maltman has a big voice, but he isn’t always in control of it and in these songs he tended to bellow. He was much better suited to the Four Last Songs, which demanded much more subtlety in performance, and he proved that he could sing quietly and expressively.

Between these two cycles Joan Rodgers gave us six delightful early songs by Herbert Howells and the very long Housman cycle Along the Field with accompaniment for solo violin. VW certainly understood Housman’s poetry better here than in the earlier Housman cycle On Wenlock Edge. Gone is the excess of the earlier work and simplicity is to the fore. However, what makes these songs less of a success than the later Folksongs, which Maltman sang, with solo violin, in the second half, was that the violin seemed to be against the voice whereas in the folksongs there was total integration. The other work in the first half was Two Pieces for violin and piano by VW. They certainly have a charm but little more than that.

The second half started with the best, and most clearly conceived and thought out music of the evening – seven songs from Finzi’s great cycle Before and After Summer. Maltman was truly at home in these songs, fully understanding Finzi’s understated settings and bringing out the best in them. The great Channel Firing – with its evocation of the big guns set against a discussion on life – was magnificently handled. As the complete cycle consists of ten songs,  one wonders why only seven songs were performed. I would willingly have forgone another short VW piece to allow the full cycle an airing. Hopefully Maltman will give us the complete work in the future.

Joan Rodgers sang Howells’s French Chansons without charm, and the four performers came together at the end for, possibly, the first performance in a century of VW very early Vocal Duets – again setting Whitman. There was more than a whiff of the drawing room in the first song and neither had any personality or charisma.

It’s interesting that in a concert called Vaughan Williams and Friends there wasn’t one note by his closest composer friend – Gustav Holst. As there was a violinist on hand Holst’s Four Songs for voice and violin would have been a welcome addition to the fare. As it is, there was too much that was negligible in this show – just because VW is a grand old man of English music doesn’t mean that everything he wrote is worthy of our attention, even in this commemorative year, and some of what we heard tonight didn’t seem worth it, and just occasionally I felt that the performers had the same feeling.

Bob Briggs

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