Vaughan Williams-The Solent (Two world premieres)

Fantastic disc on Albion records features 2 world premiere recordings and other works that RVW fans
are surely already fond of like I am. Enjoy!

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS was just thirty when he composed The Solent in 1902 and eighty when he completed the Prelude on an Old Carol Tune in 1952. Over this astonishing period, a time of two World Wars and unprecedented social, economic and political change, Vaughan Williams' music remained broadly consistent. Of course, he grew in confidence and technical accomplishment and both folk song and the period of study with Ravel in early 1908 added colour and a fresh texture to his music. What was remarkable, however, was the consistency of style – from the visionary melody that opens The Solent to the richly harmonized setting of the carol On Christmas Night the Joy-Bells Ring of 1952 – the music is recognizably Vaughan Williams.

Over this fifty years, another feature remains constant and that is Vaughan Williams' preoccupation with life as a spiritual and personal journey, one fraught with danger and often ending in tragedy, but showing noble and courageous human endeavour in the face of fate and adversity as we progress towards 'the Unknown Region'. This focus, sometimes using the sea as a metaphor for the perils of the journey, is shown in his lifelong obsession with Bunyan's Christian as he journeys toward the Celestial City in The Pilgrim's Progress. Walt Whitman, Shakespeare and Thomas Hardy added depth to this search; the poignant fate of Tess moved Vaughan Williams deeply throughout his long life. So too did the tragic endeavour of Captain Scott's expedition to the Antarctic. That The Solent is prefaced with a quote from a Philip Marston poem adds another layer – Marston's life was an uplifting example of remarkable achievement against a background of a succession of personal tragedies.

The span of music presented here demonstrates two other elements of Vaughan Williams' character. The first is his depth of literary understanding, including, on this CD alone, settings or references to Philip Marston, Matthew Arnold, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jeremy Taylor, Dr Isaac Watts, Richard Crashaw, Robert Bridges and Thomas Hardy. The second element was his knowledge and love of the English countryside. He knew the New Forest well and often took holidays in the Salisbury area, near to Harnham Down and The Solent. The Three Impressions for Orchestra recorded here for the first time were followed by In the Fen Country (1904) and three Norfolk Rhapsodies (1906 – only two survive). His knowledge of the English landscape was deepened by his folk-song collecting, in every corner of the country, from 1904. All this was, of course, part of Vaughan Williams' stated desire to create and sustain a 'true school of English music', an aim he enthusiastically shared with Gustav Holst whose own Cotswold Symphony had been written in March, 1902.

A tremendously rewarding and consistently absorbing compendium, this, flawlessly performed under Paul Daniel's idiomatic direction, and beautifully engineered to boot. A mandatory acquisition for all RVW acolytes. -Gramophone November 2013-

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