WHITHER MUST I WANDER? Three Shakespeare Songs, Op.6 Roger Quilter (1877-1953) i ENGLISH SONGS BY VAUGHAN WILLIAMS, Come away, Death [2.36] o O Mistress mine [1.29] FINZI & QUILTER p Blow, blow, thou Winter Wind [2.33] a Silent Noon (From The House of Life) Ralph Vaughan Williams [4.06] Songs of Travel Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) s Linden Lea Ralph Vaughan Williams [2.32] 1 The Vagabond [3.04] d Blackmwore by the Stour Ralph Vaughan Williams [2.03] 2 Let Beauty Awake [1.38] Total timings: [65.09] 3 The Roadside Fire [2.19] 4 Youth and Love [3.27] 5 In Dreams [2.51] DAVID JOHN PIKE BARITONE 6 The Infinite Shining Heavens [2.15] ISABELLE TRÜB PIANO 7 Whither must I wander? [3.34] www.signumrecords.com 8 Bright is the ring of words [1.40] 9 I have trod the upward and the downward slope [1.41] From Five Mystical Songs Ralph Vaughan Williams Life’s Journey Home 0 I got me flowers [2.36] ‘For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for When Fernand Weides, Director of Luxembourg’s q Love bade me welcome [5.36] travel’s sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and radio 100,7, invited me to record a song cycle, hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this featherbed w The Call [2.13] of civilisation and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn we had in mind one of the masterpieces by Let us garlands bring, Op.18 Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) with cutting flints.’ Schubert or Schumann that are treasured in the e Come away, come away, death [4.08] German-speaking world and beyond. On reflection Robert Louis Stevenson, however, and as a Canadian-British baritone in r Who is Silvia? [1.28] Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, 1879 my adopted Luxembourg, I was drawn to put t Fear no more the heat o’ the sun [6.24] Cover Image - Lighthouse at Rattray Head, Aberdeenshire, our own mark on repertoire that is well known y O Mistress Mine [2.09] built by David Alan Stevenson, 1895. in English-speaking parts of the world u It was a lover and his lass [2.47] Photograph by Sébastien Grébille but performed less frequently elsewhere. What - 3 - better place to start than with Ralph Vaughan took him well beyond the coast of Scotland Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs are songs offer manic contrast with ‘It was a lover Williams whose works paved the road from on an astonishingly adventurous, bohemian settings of poems from George Herbert’s and his lass’ presenting a frivolous, if slightly the previous English parlour song tradition to and artistically-inspiring odyssey. He first celebrated collection The Temple. The five naughty tonic of optimism to end the cycle. a mature art song culture. sought broader horizons in continental Europe, songs are normally performed by baritone, Quilter’s Three Shakespeare Songs include lighter most famously by canoe (An Inland Voyage, choir and orchestra; however, for this recording, interpretations of ‘Come away, Death’ and Vaughan Williams’ works, from hymns to his 1878) and donkey (Travels with a Donkey in the we have selected three which are well suited ‘O Mistress mine’ which have also become grand symphonies and of course, the songs Cévennes, 1879) through France and Belgium, to piano and solo voice. ‘I got me Flowers’ and favorites of the English songbook. which we have chosen for this recording, distill where he was to meet his future American wife ‘The Call’ are superb examples of Vaughan the British countryside into a quintessential, and step children. It was to join his new found Williams’ ability to elaborate simple tunes, To round out our programme we come back luxuriant and nostalgic musical form. His Songs family that he started a westward path first to plainsong and hymns into moving messages to Vaughan Williams, starting with ‘Silent of Travel, which have found their permanent New York, then to San Francisco. Ultimately, of faith and mysticism. Herbert himself wrote Noon’, taken from his House of Life cycle by place in the English songbook, and which are and quite remarkably, he ventured further to that music was ‘not a science only, but a divine Rosetti. This song transports me to the even referred to by some as the British Samoa, where he was to spend the rest of his voice’, a view that Vaughan Williams and many English countryside in June, high on the downs Winterreise, were an obvious point of departure life, revered by the islands’ natives. His Songs of us share. ‘Love bade me welcome’, through its overlooking the shires, poppies nodding in for us. The songs are settings from Robert of Travel, a collection of poems written over his rhapsodic mystical romanticism, demonstrates fresh corn fields, slumbering with my girl. A Louis Stevenson’s collection of poems by the eclectic lifetime, evoke sentimental memories of that transcendence and conveys the essence more luxuriant evocation of the English same name, recounting the literal and allegorical things very Scottish therefore, but also need of the Christian message like few other works. countryside is hard to imagine. The ever popular experience of the vagabond’s adventures, to be heard in the enigmatic context of the ‘Linden Lea’ and more jovial ‘Blackmwore by trials, disappointments, joys and resolve. They South Pacific, with its own infinite shining Gerald Finzi’s Let us garlands bring is an obvious the Stour’ are ‘Dorset’ songs, although therefore easily evoke reflections of our own lives. heavens, and where Stevenson likely pondered accompaniment to the Vaughan Williams songs, contrivances, inasmuch as they were the some regrets, but also the satisfaction of not least because Finzi dedicated them product of two gentleman scholars at Key to Stevenson’s life journey was his rejection having found his new home. Stevenson’s life to his great mentor on the occasion of his Cambridge. They anticipate the nostalgic of the rather sensible option of completing his story resonates with me, having myself 70th birthday. This year marks the 70th themes of homeward journeys in the engineering studies at Edinburgh University taken up a musical vocation after following anniversary of that dedication at the National Songs of Travel, and are early examples and taking up the family lighthouse building a more conventional path, and, after having Gallery. In war-torn London, the tolling bells of of Vaughan Williams’ fascination with and business (the cover of this booklet shows left the familiarities of my origins, found ‘Come away death’ and the equally sombre eventual invaluable efforts to preserve the Rattray Head, built by Robert Louis’ cousin, comfort and satisfaction as a foreigner and elegiac but accepting ‘Fear no more the English folk tradition. David Alan Stevenson in 1895). Instead, he amongst warmly welcoming natives in my heat o’ the sun’ must have been particularly began his extraordinary life of letters, and travel newly adopted homeland. moving for that first audience. The remaining By David John Pike, Kingston, Canada, 12 October 2012. - 4 - - 5 - Vaughan Williams, Quilter and Finzi of Elwes survives in the British Library. Perhaps one of his most popular pieces ever since. compositions and indeed, after the death of a key difference between the two composers Settings of William Barnes were followed by Vaughan Williams’ close friend Gustav Holst in Ralph Vaughan Williams and Roger Quilter was the extent to which Vaughan Williams settings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, including a 1934, Vaughan Williams, in his turn, included were born five years apart, in 1872 and 1877 became imbued with the spirit of English cycle entitled The House of Life, which included Finzi in the circle of friends on whom he tried respectively, and died five years apart, in 1958 folksong whereas Quilter’s roots lay closer to ‘Silent Noon’, and a cantata Willow Wood. out his major new compositions. lt was therefore and 1953. They were thus contemporaries. the mainstream German artsong. His attention then moved on to the poetry natural that Finzi wanted to mark his friend’s However, though they knew each other and of Robert Louis Stevenson and the cycle Songs 70th birthday by dedicating a new work to occasionally corresponded, they were not close Once he left college, Vaughan Williams spent of Travel quickly established itself as a major him, his cycle of Shakespeare songs Let us friends. They both had similar well-to-do family time in Berlin studying with Max Bruch in work in the vocal repertoire. Vaughan Williams’ garlands bring. Finzi wrote to the composer’s backgrounds, the one deriving money through 1897-98 and on his return set about establishing next inspiration was Walt Whitman, whose first wife Adeline telling her of his intention his mother from the well-established Wedgwood himself as a composer. Apart from the Five words he set in Toward the Unknown Region which she warmly welcomed, though she china business, the other from stockbroking Mystical Songs which were written in 1911, the for chorus and orchestra (1907), and then the requested the omission of any reference to in the City of London, but as composers they songs on this disc were written in the period work which put Vaughan Williams’ name firmly her husband’s age in the dedication which were very different. Quilter went in 1896 to 1901-1904 when he was gradually finding his on the English musical map, A Sea Symphony reads ‘For Ralph Vaughan Williams on his study at the Conservatory at Frankfurt and individual voice.