Tag Archives: Ralph Vaughan Williams

In concert – Gwilym Bowen, Gareth Brynmor John, William Vann, Navarra String Quartet @ Temple Church, London – Ian Venables: Out of the Shadows (a 70th birthday concert)

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Gwilym Bowen (tenor), Gareth Brynmor John (baritone), William Vann (piano), Navarra Quartet [Benjamin Marquise Gilmore, Eva Aronian (violins), Sascha Bota (viola), Brian O’Kane (cello)]

Venables Out of the Shadows Op.55 (2023)
Vaughan Williams arr. Vann Fantasia on Greensleeves (1934)
Vaughan Williams On Wenlock Edge (1909)
Vaughan Williams Love Bade Me Welcome (1911)
Venables Portraits of a Mind Op.54 (2022)
Howells An Old Man’s Lullaby (1947)

The Temple Church, London
Tuesday 4 November 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

The emergence of Ian Venables as the leading British art-song composer was suitably marked with a 70th-birthday concert, sponsored by the Morris-Venables Charitable Foundation under the auspices of Temple Music Foundation and held in the evocative setting of Temple Church.

Song cycles being at the forefront of Venables’s output, it made sense to start with one of his most recent – Out of the Shadows a wide-ranging overview of male love. From the coyness of Constantine Cavafy’s At the Cafè Door and the barbed humour of Horatio Brown’s Bored, this takes in the fleeting ecstasy of Cavafy’s The Mirror in the Hall and stark soulfulness of Alfred Tennyson’s Dark House, prior to the overt playfulness of John Addington Symonds’s Love’s Olympian Laughter and calm affirmation of Edward Perry Warren’s Body and Soul.

Affectingly sung by Gareth Brynmor John (above), it preceded likely the most influential such cycle in English. A. E. Housman may have disliked his settings, but Vaughan Williams always gets to the heart of the matter in On Wenlock Edge. Hence the volatile imaginings of its title-number or hymnic poise of ‘From Far, from Eve and Morning’, the brooding dialogue of ‘Is My Team Ploughing’ or nonchalant wit of ‘Oh, When I Was in Love with You’; reaching a climax in the innocence to experience of ‘Bredon Hill’, with ‘Clun’ ending the sequence in fatalistic repose.

Gwilym Bowen gave a searching account of this cycle (doubly so having replaced Alessandro Fisher at such short notice), with Brynmor John comparably attuned to the understatement of George Butterworth’s Love Blows as the Wind Blows. These settings of W. E. Henley amount to a cohesive yet subtly contrasted entity – the existential musing of In the Year that’s Come and Gone followed by the deadpan charm of Life in Her Creaking Shoes and effervescence of Fill a Glass with Golden Wine, then On the Way to Kew brings a close of deftest poise.

Bowen duly tackled a further Venables cycle. Written to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Vaughan Williams’s birth, Portraits of a Mind is a notably inclusive one of the composer. Hence the gentle pantheism of George Meredith’s The Lark Ascending and the meditation on creativity of Ursula VW’s Man Makes Delight His Own; the engaging impetus of R. L. Stevenson’s From a Railway Carriage a perfect foil to the resignation of Christina Rosetti’s Echo, before lines from Walt Whitman’s A Clear Midnight conjure a warm transcendence.

Throughout these performances, the playing of the Navarra Quartet (above) evinced an incisiveness and eloquence always at the service of this music; William Vann’s attentive pianism astutely deployed in his appealing arrangement of VW’s Fantasia on ‘Greensleeves’. Brynmor John opened the second half with that composer’s disarming take on George Herbert’s Love Bade Me Welcome (first of Five Mystical Songs), with both vocalists heard to advantage in An Old Man’s Lullaby – Herbert Howells’s setting of Thomas Dekker that made for a winsome envoi.

Taken overall, this was a wholly pleasurable evening and welcome confirmation of Venables’ creative prowess – his corpus of songs or song-cycles surely second to none among those for whom the English language is a source of never-ending and always unexpected possibilities.

Click here to read an extensive tribute to Ian Venables on from his husband, pianist Graham J. Lloyd – or click on the names to read more about Gwilym Bowen, Gareth Brynmor John, William Vann, the Navarra Quartet and Temple Music Foundation

Published post no.2,710 – Thursday 6 November 2025

In concert – Laurence Kilsby, Christopher Parkes, Sinfonia of London / John Wilson: Serenade @ Barbican Hall, London

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Laurence Kilsby (tenor), Christopher Parkes (horn), Sinfonia of London / John Wilson

Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910)
Britten Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings Op.31 (1943)
Bliss Music for Strings B66 (1935)
Delius arr. Fenby Late Swallows (1916, arr. 1962)
Elgar Introduction and Allegro Op.47 (1904-05)

Barbican Hall, London
Wednesday 22 October 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

One can only commend John Wilson and Sinfonia of London for, in addition to an ambitious recording schedule for Chandos, frequently taking its programmes on tour – as has been the case with this judicious selection of works for string orchestra tonight being heard in London.

There could hardly be an acoustic less suited to Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia than that of Barbican Hall, yet Wilson went a good deal of the way toward making it succeed by having the main string body – and solo quartet – to the front of the platform with the subsidiary group arrayed along its rear. The outer section were taken slowly and almost impassively, but there was no lack of impetus or fervency as the central phase built cumulatively towards its climax.

The relatively modest number of strings seemed ideally suited to Britten’s Serenade. Laurence Kilsby (who made a fine contribution to Bliss’s The Beatitudes at this year’s Proms) brought real tenderness to Pastorale and ardour to Nocturne, while Christopher Parkes was suitably plangent in Elegy and dextrousness itself in Dirge. Tenor and hornist joined delightfully in Hymn, then Wilson drew playing of fastidious poise in Sonnet. Just a little unsteady in the Prologue, Parkes excelled in the offstage Epilogue with its ethereal reprise of that opening music – so rounding off a performance that proved affecting and unaffected in equal measure.

Live and in the studio, Wilson has affirmed a commitment to the music of Bliss which could hardly have been more evident than in Music for Strings which formed the centrepiece of this concert. It had been written for the Vienna Philharmonic to premiere at the Salzburg Festival and, if its formidable technical demands no longer sound forbidding, there can have been few performances of this virtuosity or insight. Trenchant and impulsive, the opening Allegro was followed by an Andante whose sustained eloquence never excluded lightness of touch – with the speculative transition into the final Allegro as deftly handled as the Presto with which this work surges to its headlong close. Not merely a timely revival, this was no less a vindication.

Introducing this second half, Wilson had remarked how Delius’ music needs to be coaxed into yielding up its secrets as surely as it needs selling to the musicians. Late Swallows succeeded on both fronts. As arranged by Eric Fenby from the composer’s only mature string quartet, it takes its place among the latter’s most haunting evocations, and not least in a central section whose rapt intensity brought an emotional frisson that tangibly held its listeners spellbound.

Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro may, by contrast, be a piece that plays itself but it still calls for interpretive input of a high order. Wilson responded with an unusually swift reading such as emphasized its nervous intensity and often volatile changes of mood, though there was no lack of cohesion or underlying momentum in a performance that took such testing passages as the central fugato assuredly in its stride prior to a glowing apotheosis then decisive close.

A performance, moreover, as set the seal on a memorable evening’s music-making. All these pieces, save the Britten, have been recorded by Wilson and Sinfonia of London for Chandos, their advocacy of Bliss hopefully continuing well beyond this 50th anniversary of his death.

Click here to read Arcana’s review of English Music for Strings, the Chandos album containing the Bliss and Vaughan Williams works performed in this concert.

Click also on the links for more information on the Sinfonia of London and their conductor John Wilson, along with soloists Laurence Kilsby and Christopher Parkes. For more information on Bliss, you can visit the Arthur Bliss Society

Published post no.2,697 – Friday 24 October 2025

On this day – the birth of Vaughan Williams…and the centenary of ‘Flos Campi’

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Picture: By uncredited press photographer, public domain

by Ben Hogwood

On this day in 1872, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was born. One of the best-loved English composers, he is loved for quintessentially English portraits such as The Lark Ascending, while his cycle of nine symphonies is gradually getting the acclaim it deserves.

On this occasion Arcana would like to highlight an unusual piece, celebrating its centenary two days ago – the suite for viola, chorus and orchestra Flos Campi. It is set in six movements, each titled after a verse from the Song of Solomon.

The first performance took place at London’s Queen’s Hall, where soloist Lionel Tertis performed with a wordless choir from the Royal College of Music and the Queen’s Hall Orchestra, conducted by Sir Henry Wood.

In the words of the composer, its “unabashedly sensual and lushly orchestrated” qualities were “quite appropriate considering its subject matter”. You can listen to a classic performance below, with Frederick Riddle and the Bournemouth Sinfonietta Choir and Orchestra conducted by Norman Del Mar.

Published post no.2,685 – Sunday 12 October 2025

On this day – the premiere of Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music

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Picture: By uncredited press photographer, public domain

by Ben Hogwood

On this day in 1938, the premiere of Serenade to Music, one of Vaughan Williams‘ best-loved pieces, took place at the Royal Albert Hall. Conducted by Sir Henry Wood, the orchestra was a blend of players from the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra and London Philharmonic Orchestra.

In the audience was a certain Sergei Rachmaninoff, who had performed his own Piano Concerto no.2 in the first half of the concert, and who was moved to tears by Vaughan Williams’ new work.

Serenade To Music is led by a group of 16 solo singers, a starry line-up including the likes of Isobel Baillie, Elsie Suddaby, Heddle Nash and Walter Widdop. The account below is conducted by John Wilson, from the Concordia Foundation 15th Anniversary Gala at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. 22nd November 2010:

Published post no.2,678 – Sunday 5 October 2025

In concert – Peter Moore, London Symphony Orchestra / Ryan Bancroft @ BBC Proms: Folk Songs & Dances

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Peter Moore (trombone), London Symphony Orchestra / Ryan Bancroft

Vaughan Williams English Folk Song Suite (1923)
Schuller Eine kleine Posaunenmusik (1980) [Proms premiere]
Tippett Triumph (1992) [Proms premiere]
Arnold arr. Johnstone English Dances Set 1 Op.27 (1950, arr. 1965)
Grainger The Lads of Wamphray (1904), Country Gardens (1918, arr. 1953), Lincolnshire Posy (1937)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Saturday 30 August 2025 11am

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) BBC / Chris Christodoulou

His pained countenance may have adorned its programme cover but Sir Simon Rattle’s ‘routine surgery’ meant this morning’s Prom was directed by Ryan Bancroft, though the works played by woodwind and brass (and basses) of the London Symphony Orchestra remained the same.

The concert duly breezed into life with Vaughan Williams’ English Folksong Suite, heard in its original scoring for concert (i.e. – military) band such as imparts a forthright impetus to its outer marches – the former alternating brusqueness with insouciance, and the latter similarly balancing energy with geniality. In between these, the intermezzo provided welcome respite with its soulful medley. Expert as are the arrangements for orchestra by Gordon Jabob or for brass band by Frank Wright, this remains the ideal medium for an unassuming masterpiece.

It would have been remiss of the Proms not to include a piece by Gunther Schuller in the year of his centenary, with Eine Kleine Posaunenmusik being a fine choice in context. Fastidiously scored for trombone and ensemble, whose wind and brass melded into tuned percussion with notable solos from piano and harpsichord, its five succinct movements outline a succession of vignettes in which Peter Moore sounded as attuned expressively as technically. With music as distinctive as this, Schuller’s fourth appearance at these concerts will hopefully not be his last.

Surprising that Michael Tippett’s Triumph should have remained so obscure within his output. Seemingly made during work on The Rose Lake, this ‘Paraphrase on Music from The Mask of Time’ is for the greater part his arrangement of the oratorio’s sixth movement, though it could be heard as encapsulating his music over the decade from the mid-’70s. The main portion pits fractured lyricism against dissonant outbursts as befits its genesis in a setting of Shelley’s The Triumph of Life and, if the closing affirmation sounds added-on, its finality is hardly in doubt.

There could hardly have been a more pointed contrast than with Malcolm Arnold’s initial set of English Dances – its sequence of winsome, bracing, elegiac then energetic numbers ideally conveyed in Maurice Johnstone’s arrangement. Their concision was thrown into relief by the relative garrulousness of The Lads of Wamphray, an early example of Percy Grainger’s love for folksong which, in this instance, rather outstays its welcome. Rattle presumably enjoys it and Bancroft gave it its head, but its inclusion here was not warranted by its musical quality.

From the other end of Grainger’s career, his concert-band arrangement of Country Gardens exudes all the wit and irony of his later creativity. It made a canny upbeat into Lincolnshire Posy, one of a select handful of concert band masterpieces and where the LSO gave its all. Thus, the incisive Lisbon (Dublin Bay) was followed by the pathos-drenched Horkstow Grange then intricately imaginative Rufford Park Poachers; the jaunty The Brisk Young Sailor by the darkly rhetorical Lord Melbourne (very different from Britten’s elegiac take).

The surging impetus of The Lost Lady Found brought to a suitably rousing close this suite and what was a fine showcase for the LSO woodwind and brass, an unexpected if welcome appearance by Bancroft and, above all, a demonstration of the potential of the concert band.

Click on the artist names to read more about Peter Moore, the London Symphony Orchestra and conductor Ryan Bancroft. Click also for more on composer Gunter Schuller and the BBC Proms

Published post no.2,644 – Monday 1 September 2025