During the course of
a recent Dunelm review I wondered aloud
that we should have an album of John
R Williamson’s settings of Housman.
Little did I know that we already have
two such discs, also issued by Dunelm
who have shown a strong commitment to
this composer’s work and one of which
– to complete my ignorance – has already
been reviewed on this site by Rob Barnett.
Luckily I have made rapid amends and
find myself impressed once more.
A number of the lyrics
set here are Late Housman and Williamson
responds with clarity but also a tensely
argued sense of narrative. It’s notable
how often a lyric is lit from within
in these settings, how for example in
The Isle of Portland Williamson
colours the phrases stop under pressure
and dream you light. Similarly
he catches the military strut of As
I gird on for fighting with his
own brand of off-centre balladry fused
with nervous dissonance. The subtle
implication of March rhythm is something
at which Williamson proves himself comprehensively
successful (Now hollow fires burn
out to black) and his complex response
to the poems can best be exemplified
by When I came last to Ludlow
in which the piano postlude gives hypnotic
space for retrospective reinterpretation
of this quizzical setting; it seems
to expand and deepen still further.
He certainly embraces the pastoral as
much as the rapid military, as indeed
he does Housman’s mordancies and reveries.
Even in such a well-known setting as
With rue my heart is laden we
find something new is being said – something
elliptical, open-ended, strange. One
finds with Williamson that both piano
and vocal lines inhabit the veins of
the lyric, the piano frequently setting
up and evoking an initial anticipatory
mood that grows more complex when the
baritone enters – I think of the other-worldly
delicacy of the opening piano paragraph
in I wake from dreams and
turning. He manages to vest these
settings with immediacy and atmosphere
from the start. Equally impressive are
the vigorous and unremitting The
mill stream
and the bleak It nods and
curtseys.
In view of the short
playing time this disc retails at £6.
There’s a boxy acoustic and some ancillary
problems but you will listen through
those to the performances. I shall soon
be reviewing the companion disc of Williamson’s
Housman songs released by Dunelm – contact
them for all details. In the meantime
I think you will find much that is complex,
personal, reflective and – in the best
sense – problematically human in these
excellent settings.
Jonathan Woolf
see also
review by Rob Barnett
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Nigel Shaw (bar) 
