This was the first
recording of "The Sons of Light".
When I reviewed
the second recording, by David Lloyd-Jones
on Naxos, I found the Lyrita preferable,
with more presence to the recording,
more vital conducting and better choral
diction. At that time there still seemed
to be no prospect of the many Lyrita
treasures ever seeing the light of day
again. Now things are changing and this
is the recording to get.
I referred in my review
to the "coursing energy and phenomenal
range of colour" of the work. It
is, in its way, one of Vaughan Williams’s
most impressive. You would certainly
never imagine it was written to be sung
by children – 1,150 of them at the first
performance in 1951, with the accompaniment
of the LPO under Boult. What worries
me is that, every time I come to it,
I find I don’t remember it. It’s not
just that the themes don’t stay in my
mind. As the work plays I don’t get
any sense of recognition – "Ah,
I remember that bit now". I hear
it as a work I’ve never heard before.
This is not a problem I have with Vaughan
Williams generally.
Though I also had the
LP containing "The Mystic Trumpeter"
I never really listened to it often
enough to say whether it sticks in my
mind or not. I should think it unlikely.
I find the same problem here as with
Vaughan Williams’s "Willow-Wood",
which was also on the Naxos/Lloyd-Jones
disc. The composer has very skilfully
set the poem line by line, with meaningful
upward swoops for important words, pregnant
key-changes and so on. He’s produced
a nice wall-paper backing to a poem
that is far more exciting when it’s
simply read. But composition is about
creation. It is a constructive process.
If you start with an exhilarating poem
and finish with a piece of music with
about as much tension as a wet lettuce,
is this to be defined as composition
or decomposition? A work for Holst completists
only. The performance is good enough,
though Armstrong’s voice sometimes billows
when it should soar. Holst seems to
have a whopping Wagnerian soprano voice
in mind and Armstrong, for all her virtues,
was not exactly that. There is also
a touch of opaqueness to some of her
notes on the CD, though not on the LP.
The Parry is a far
more memorable work. The composer had
the good sense to choose a poem which
provides a refrain. He does not repeat
the same music every time but provides
a new variation of it. The result is
a sort of variation rondo form, combining
continuous development with structural
unity. Parry is at his finest and most
eloquent throughout, from the lilting
opening to the dancing energy of the
later stanzas. There is a satisfying
build-up which dies away to a touching
close. There is also a lovely solo stanza,
beautifully sung by Teresa Cahill. John
Quinn noted in his review
that her word underlay at the end of
this stanza was at variance with the
new edition he was using and wondered
if the edition had been revised. I doubt
it; I have a copy of the original edition
and the textual underlay is different
from what is sung there, too. Quite
simply, the music as written calls unrealistically
for a third lung, so I imagine Cahill
herself changed the underlay in order
to take a breath in the middle. Composers
who aren’t singers miscalculate in this
way more often than you’d expect – even
Verdi did sometimes. Read John’s review,
by the way; he has had the good fortune
to sing in a rare performance of the
work and his enthusiasm comes from within.
But did the soprano at that performance
cope with that long phrase in a single
breath?
If Parry is at his
best, so is Willcocks. It’s a thrilling
performance from a great choral conductor.
This is the only recording of the piece
so far, but now it’s available again
we hardly need another. Just for the
record, I have always thought Cahill
a little insecure in her opening phrase,
but thereafter she is splendid. She
has a lovely disc
of R. Strauss and Rachmaninov to her
credit and, unlike Sheila Armstrong
in "The Mystic Trumpeter",
her voice doesn’t billow, it soars.
Maybe in 1912 the Parry
seemed old-fashioned. In 2007 it just
seems timeless.
Outstanding recordings,
as always with Lyrita, and notes by
Ursula Vaughan Williams, Bernard Benoliel
and Imogen Holst.
Christopher Howell
See also reviews
by John
Quinn Rob
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