Continuing their survey of songs by Elizabeth Maconchy and Ralph Vaughan Williams, James Geer and Ronald Woodley begin their recital with the latter’s Four Last Songs. (See here for review of Volume 1). These were published posthumously in 1960. All the texts were written by RVW’s wife, Ursula. It has been explained that originally, these songs may have been supposed to have been parts of two separate cycles: Procris and Menelaus exploring Classical themes from the mythology of Ancient Greece and Rome and Tired and Hand, Eyes, and Heart concerned with love between partners. The liner notes explain that later research has suggested another grouping of the texts. Whatever the original intent and scope of the proposed publication, the theme of all four songs is “Love.” The mood of the songs is different, Procris and Menelaus are like accompanied recitatives with vocal line and piano part “doing their own thing,” where the other two are more melodic and have straightforward accompaniments. The version of the Four Last Songs heard here has been transposed for tenor. A mezzo-soprano or baritone usually sings it.
Vaughan Williams’s The House of Life (1903) sets six numbers from the first part of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s eponymous collection of sonnets. Written slightly earlier than the ubiquitous Songs of Travel, this cycle looks more towards European songwriters such as Schumann, Wagner and “perhaps Duparc.” The entire cycle has been described as “a meditation on the concept of duality: life and death, time and eternity, erotic and Platonic love, matter and spirit.” (Vaughan Williams Project). I associate this work with a baritone (Roderick Williams, Benjamin Luxon, etc.) however, James Geer’s performance is satisfying in every way. The RVW discography cites some sixteen recorded examples of The House of Life, with only five of the Four Last Songs.
In Volume 1 of this project, Geer and Woodley performed two unpublished songs from Elizabeth Maconchy’s The Garland: Variations on a Theme. In 1938, her husband, William Le Fanu, had translated seven poems from the Anacreontea, a volume of about sixty short verses authored by post-Classical Greek authors. The themes of these poems are wine, beauty, erotic love, and the worship of Dionysus. The songs heard on this present CD were published in 1984 as a group of four. They are delightful, often quite beautiful, not challenging, and full of colourful imagery, both verbally and musically. As a pendant to this group, another number from the cycle, The Swallow, has been included as a separate entity, to respect the composer’s desire to have the published set “retaining its own identity.”
Several standalone Maconchy songs have been included. The Exequy (Funeral Rites) (1956) sets a few lines from Henry King, Bishop of Chichester’s long poem Exequy on his wife, written when in mourning after the death of his young spouse. It is not an easy piece to listen to. The musical texture is astringent, often intense, but sometimes quite beautiful. The liner notes suggest that the “tolling accompaniment” nods to Maurice Ravel’s Le Gibet from Gaspard de la Nuit.
Two settings (1941) of the
Anglo-Irish poet Sheila Wingfield (later Viscountess Powerscourt) are of
interest. The first, Sailor’s Song of the Two Balconies provides a marked
contrast between bleakness (of Northern climes) and the warmth of the Hispanic imagery
in the “middle eight.” This is followed by the equally gloomy The
Disillusion. Due to copyright issues, the texts of these are not given in
the liner notes.
An early song was The Poet-Wooer, with words by the Jacobean/Carolinian poet Ben Jonson, completed in 1928. Much of the vocal line is unaccompanied, with the piano providing the lightest of touches. Bleakness is again the watchword for Maconchy’s setting of Emily Bronte’s Sleep Brings No Joy to Me (1937). It matches the mood of Emily’s sad memories and her suffering in life. In a Fountain Court (1929), with a text by Arthur Symons, is much closer to RVW’s aesthetic with its gently moving modal melodies and harmonies. The music perfectly mirrors “The fountain murmuring of sleep/A drowsy tune.”
The final song (really a scena) on this disc is Maconchy’s How Samson Bore Away the Gates of Gaza (original version of 1937). I do not like this caricature/pastiche on the biblical story, which is confused and overblown. It is based on a William Topaz McGonagall-esque text by the modernist poet Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931). The liner notes suggest that her “extended, dramatic setting deliberately plays with certain parodic Middle Eastern harmonic clichés of the period and seems not to take itself entirely seriously.” For this listener, its ten-minute duration seems to go on for ever. That said, there are many good things in the vivid vocal line and the sympathetic accompaniment. Just a pity about the text.
Like Volume 1, the performances by James Geer and Ronald Woodley, the recording and documentation are second to none. I reiterate, that it was a splendid notion to pair RVW with his erstwhile pupil Elizabeth Maconchy. This second volume also makes a wonderful opportunity for exploring the vocal music of these two English composers.
Track Listing:Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Four Last Songs (pub. post. 1960)
1. Procris
2. Tired
3. Hands, Eyes, and Heart
4. Menelaus
Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-94)
5. The Exequy (1956)
The Garland: Variations on a Theme (1938)
6. The Garland
7. Old and Young
8. I Would I Were a Mirror
9. No End to Love
10. Sailor’s Song of the Two Balconies (1941)
11. The Disillusion (1941)
12. The Swallow (1938)
13. The Poet-Wooer (1928)
14. Sleep Brings No Joy to Me (1937)
15. In Fountain Court (1929)
Ralph Vaughan Williams
The House of Life (1903)
16. Love-Sight
17. Silent Noon
18. Love’s Minstrels
19. Heart’s Haven
20. Death in Love
21. Love’s Last Gift
Elizabeth Maconchy
22. How Samson Bore Away the Gates of Gaza (original version of 1937)
James Geer (tenor), Ronald Woodley (piano)
rec. 6-9 September 2022 Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth
Resonus RES10317
With thanks to MusicWeb International where this review was first published.
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