booklet-paginated:Layout 1 20/06/2019 13:32 Page 1 The RALPH VAUGHAN Ralph Vaughan Williams ALBION RECORDS WILLIAMS SOCIETY Bull ©Peter Photograph Dedicated to widening the knowledge, understanding and THE SONG LOVE appreciation of Ralph Vaughan Williams President SIR ANDREW DAVIS CBE Vice Presidents STEPHEN CONNOCK MBE, DR JOYCE KENNEDY Chairman SIMON COOMBS FOR FURTHER INFORMATION Mark Hammett (Membership Secretary) 27 Landsdowne Way, Bexhill-on-Sea, HA G N East Sussex, TN40 2UJ U W A I V Email: [email protected] L L H I A www.rvwsociety.com P M Kitty Whately mezzo-soprano L A Registered Charity no: 1156614 S R Roderick Williams baritone S O C I E T Y William Vann piano 32 1 booklet-paginated:Layout 1 20/06/2019 13:32 Page 3 THE SONG LOVE Ralph Vaughan Williams 1872-1958 The House of Life (1903-1904) 1 Love-Sight 4’42 2 Silent Noon 3’38 3 Love’s Minstrels 4’44 4 Heart’s Haven 3’23 5 Death in Love 4’19 6 Love’s Last Gift 4’01 Three Old German Songs (1902) 7 Entlaubet ist der Walde 2’31 8 Wanderlied 2’39 9 Der Morgenstern 1’30 Peter Clulow, Roderick Williams, Deborah Spanton,Andrew Walton, Kitty Whately, William Vann, John Francis 10 To Daffodils (Gunby Hall setting, c. 1903) 3’39 French songs (1903-1904) 11 Quant li Louseignolz (Quand le Rossignol) 1’47 12 L’amour de Moy 3’23 13 Jean Renaud 2’54 14 Le Psaume des batailles (Que Dieu Se Montre Seulement) 3’43 This recording is dedicated to the memory of 15 Buonaparty (1908) 1’39 Laura Coombs (1944-2018), a trustee of The Ralph Vaughan Williams Society and wife of its chairman, Simon Coombs. 2 31 booklet-paginated:Layout 1 20/06/2019 13:32 Page 5 About Albion Records Directors: John Francis FCA (Chairman), Mark Hammett Fulfilment: Mark and Sue Hammett Web-Master: Tad Kasa Since its formation in 1994, The Ralph Vaughan Williams Society – a registered charity with around 1,000 members worldwide – has sought to raise the profile of the composer through 16 The Willow Song (1897) 4’12 publications, seminars and sponsorship of recordings. The Society’s recording label,Albion Records, was formed in 2007 and is devoted to Three Songs from Shakespeare (1925) recordings of works by Vaughan Williams. Each recording contains at least one world première 17 Take, O Take, Those Lips Away 0’53 recording. Two recordings (The Solent and Discoveries) were nominated for a Grammy award, 18 When Icicles Hang by the Wall 1’18 and many recordings have spent some weeks in the UK’s specialist classical chart. 19 Orpheus with his Lute 1’24 20 The Spanish Ladies (1912) 2’40 21 The Turtle Dove (1919-1934) 2’59 Two Poems by Seumas O’Sullivan (1925) 22 Twilight People 2’39 23 A Piper 0’44 Duets (1903) ALBCD002 ALBCD029 ALBCD038 24 Think of Me 1’51 Kissing her hair Purer than Pearl Time and Space 25 Adieu 1’40 Vaughan Williams Vaughan Williams Holst and Vaughan songs songs and duets Williams songs 68’52 Sarah Fox, Andrew Staples, Mary Bevan, Jennifer Mary Bevan, Roderick Roderick Williams and Iain Johnston, Nicky Spence, Williams, Jack Liebeck and Kitty Whately ~ mezzo-soprano (tracks 1-6, 16-19, 24-25) Burnside Johnny Herford,Thomas William Vann Roderick Williams ~ baritone (tracks 7-15, 20-25) Gould, William Vann William Vann ~ piano For further information visit: Tracks 11-14, 16, 20, 21, 24 and 25 are arrangements of older melodies by Vaughan www.rvwsociety.com/albionrecords Williams. The remaining tracks are original compositions by him. Join The Ralph Vaughan Williams Society at Tracks 7-14 and 16-23 are first modern recordings in these arrangements www.rvwsociety.com (Steuart Wilson recorded The Spanish Ladies on a 78 rpm disc). 30 3 booklet-paginated:Layout 1 20/06/2019 13:32 Page 7 Production credits Albion recordings generally include world premières and this collection of songs and duets Musical Director: William Vann by Ralph Vaughan Williams is no exception. It begins with the first complete ‘female’ Executive Producer, booklet notes and photography: John Francis recording of the song cycle The House of Life and continues with sixteen previously Producer: Andrew Walton of K & A Productions unrecorded works. We have grouped them so as to offer a varied and enjoyable recital by Engineer: Deborah Spanton of K & A Productions Kitty Whately and Roderick Williams, accompanied by William Vann. Scores editor: Peter Clulow Musical assistant: Lilly Papaioannou Several of the poems set to music in this album include images that have endured, to some Recorded at Potton Hall, Suffolk, from 27 November to 1 December 2018 extent together, over many centuries – the nightingale, the rose, the lily and the violet. A Cover image: Nightingale of Light by Nancy Moniz, 2012 Persian myth associates the nightingale with the rose and thorn, against which it presses its Graphic design: S L Chai (Colour Blind Design) breast in unrequited love for the flower. The rose is associated with female sexuality, with Proof reading: Martin Murray, Werner Bachman Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail; the lily was linked to the Virgin Mary by the and several others. Venerable Bede as early as the 7th Century. St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1154) linked the three flowers in describing Our Lady as ‘the violet of humility, the lily of chastity and the rose of purity’. The poems include three references to the nightingale. This much mythologised bird belongs to an ancient literary and poetic tradition with two streams, one expressing With special thanks melancholy (particularly in Homer’s ‘Odyssey’, personified as Philomela, a myth frequently Principal Sponsor and Gold Supporters: drawn upon by Shakespeare) and the other joy – and the poems in this recording are The Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust, Chris and Adie Batt, Simon Coombs, concerned with joy. Sappho (c.630-c.570 BC) wrote of ‘the messager of spring, the sweet John and Sharon Francis, Julian Ochrymowych, David Trimble. voiced nightingale.’ This positive view was taken up by the troubadours, as we shall see, Silver supporters: and continued to influence poetry up to Milton and the 19th century romantic poets. Keith Anderson, Graham Aslet, Neil Bettridge, Eric Birznieks and Carol Dean, David Bryan, Even Oscar Wilde wrote a story joining the rose and the nightingale. Accordingly, we Rodney Gavin Bullock, Caitlin and John Cassidy, Harold G Corwin,Allan Coughlin, Martin chose a nightingale for a cover image, and as a symbol of the nightingale’s song – surely, Cunningham, Anne Curry, Marcus DeLoach, Leonard Evans, Robert Field, Michael J Gainsford, The Song of Love. Alan Gillmor, Michael Godbee, Ronald Grames, Nigel Green, William Greenwood, Richard Hall, The House of Life (1903-1904) Jay Hicks, Andrew Keener, Tony Kitson, James Korner, Christian Körner, Trevor Lockwood, At this early period of Vaughan Williams’s career, the Pre-Raphaelite poets were a source John and Janet Manning, Barry Menhenett, William Moreing, Martin Murray, Andrew Neill, Charles Paterson, Julian Pearcey, Edward Reisman,Thomas Render, Tony Richardson, Philip Robson, of inspiration, possibly encouraged by his friendship with Grainger and other members of David Sawyer, Kevin Schutts, Brian Sturtridge, Dr Colin C Tinline, John and Muriel Treadway, the Frankfurt Group. Vaughan Williams made two song cycles from Dante Gabriel Steven K White, James C. Williams. 4 29 booklet-paginated:Layout 1 20/06/2019 13:32 Page 9 WILLIAM VANN Gramophone, reviewing Purer than Pearl, Albion Records’ 2016 disc of Vaughan Williams song, reserved ‘a special word of praise for William Vann’s deft pianism’.A multiple-prize Rossetti’s 1881 collection of 100 sonnets, ‘The House of Life’: Willow-Wood, an ambitious winning accompanist and conductor, William performs with a host of major singers and work setting four sonnets for a singer with orchestra, begun in 1900, and The House of Life instrumentalists across the world. with piano accompaniment, setting six sonnets, probably in 1903. The second song, Silent Born in Bedford, he was a Chorister at King’s College, Cambridge and a Music Scholar at Noon, was published separately ahead of the full cycle’s appearance in 1904. Its conclusion Bedford School. He read law and took up a choral scholarship at Gonville and Caius celebrates The Song of Love, from which we drew the title for this recording. College, Cambridge, where he was taught the piano by Peter Uppard, and studied piano Vaughan Williams chose the poems with care, setting numbers 4, 19, 9, 22, 48 and 59 from accompaniment at the Royal Academy of Music with Malcolm Martineau and Colin Stone. Rossetti’s collection. Love-Sight has a romantic melody, developed in a postlude on the He has been awarded many prizes for piano accompaniment, including the Wigmore Song piano. The setting for the words ‘death’s imperishable wing’ reminds us that work on A Sea Competition Jean Meikle Prize for a Duo (with Johnny Herford), the Gerald Moore award, Symphony also began as early as 1903. Silent Noon was premièred by Francis Harford (bass) the Royal Overseas League Accompanists’Award, a Geoffrey Parsons Memorial Trust award, and Philip Agnew (piano) on 10 March 1903. On that occasion The Times reported the Concordia-Serena Nevill Prize, the Association of English Singers and Speakers ‘passages of sheer beauty’ – a verdict which stands fast to the present day when this song Accompanist Prize, the Great Elm Awards Accompanist Prize, the remains very popular with singers and audiences. Michael Kennedy describes it as Sir Henry Richardson Scholarship and the Hodgson Fellowship at ‘complete in itself ... one of the first pieces of music by Vaughan Williams which captures a the RAM.