Holst and Vaughan Williams were lifelong friends and
Parry was one of RVW’s teachers at the Royal College of Music. The
Sons of Light was commissioned by the Schools Music Association
where Bernard Shore - the dedicatee - the violist was an HMI Schools.
This was to be a choral work for young singers. It was premiered at
the Albert Hall on 6 May 1951.
The Sons of Light did not talk down to the young
performers. This is mature VW and no mistake. Listen to the echoes of
Sinfonia Antartica (tr.1 7.33sample).
The typically steady and honeyed male choral singing is without saccharine.
The music is suffused with a feeling of the sea and of a certain luminosity
of expression. The composer continues to surprise
us: in tr 2 there are even suggestions of Janáčekian magnificence
(1:53). sampleThen again we hear that
serene sweetness redolent of the Serenade to Music (2:23
onwards). The finale has a wonderfully optimistic march around the sung
words This is the morning of the sons of light. sample
Vaughan Williams music written for young people and student often
bore strong fruit – for example the Concerto Grosso written for
a massive body of string players is similarly confident and rewarding.
No trace of the blandness that writing for mixed abilities might have
suggested.
Among the major RVW choral orchestral works this leaves
only the Folksongs of the Four Seasons for choir and orchestra
to be recorded.
Holst shared with his friend Vaughan Williams a love
for the poetry of Walt Whitman. RVW’s Whitman works include songs, A
Sea Symphony and part of Dona Nobis Pacem. Holst’s Dirge
for Two Veterans – a text set by
RVW in Dona Nobis Pacem - is an extraordinary work as is his
Ode to Death and both are well worth tracking down. He also wrote
this big twenty minute scena The Mystic Trumpeter opening
in music that recalls his Choral Symphony as well as introducing
some pastoral-ecstatic magic. sample 2
Sheila Armstrong is magnificent here although when she is called on
to be spirited she can take on a slightly plummy tone – which is fine
if you enjoy the Jane Baker style where the enunciation can become out
of focus. It’s a comparatively early work and there are ties when it
reminded me of another composer Hamilton Harty in Ode to a Nightingale.
Harty of course wrote his own setting of Whitman’s Mystic Trumpeter.
The Parry sets Dunbar’s Ode on Christ’s Nativity
rather than the Milton poem favoured and masterfully set by Cyril
Bradley Rootham in 1928. The Parry was premiered at the Hereford Three
Choirs on 12 September 1912 the same year in which his last symphony
(No. 5) was first performed. It remains a work very much of the nineteenth
century but its blazing confident grandeur, Brahmsian sturdiness and
seraphic smoothness impress delightfully in this idiomatic performance
which confidently and sensitively recorded. sample
These recordings derive from two 1980s LPs: SRCS128
Holst The Lure, Dances from 'The Morning of the Year';
Mystic Trumpeter-Scena for Soprano and Orchestra Op. 18.
SRCS125 Vaughan Williams The Sons of Light - A Cantata for
Chorus and Orchestra; Parry Ode to the Nativity, for Soprano,
Chorus and Orchestra.
The booklet cover for the CD derives from the original
LP sleeve design by Keith Hensby – whatever happened to Mr Hensby? I
associate his name with Lyrita’s long high summer. [see footnote]
The words are reproduced in full in the booklet. The
notes are by Ursula Vaughan Williams who wrote the poems for The
Sons of Light, Imogen Holst and Bernard Benoliel – I hope we will
hear some of his music as well before too long.
Lyrita here put on the map three neglected scores from
the British choral tradition and they do so in magnificent style.
Rob Barnett
Also Available on Lyrita
SRCD.209
Holst A Winter Idyll
SRCD.222
Holst A Fugal Overture
SRCD.211
Vaughan Williams Piano Concerto in C
SRCD.220
Parry Overture to an Unwritten Tragedy
Message from Jeffrey Davis
In his review Rob Barnett wondered what had become of Keith Hensby,
a name familiar to those of us who collected the Lyrita LPs in the 70s
as he was responsible for the imaginative designs of the sleeves.
Well, I am pleased to report that Caractus Downes of Lyrita has informed
me that Mr Hensby is alive and well and that Lyrita are in constant
touch with him over the reissues. Mr Hensby worked mainly as a painter
rather than graphic designer and he is still very active in this field.
* Teresa Cahill (soprano) 