Page 453 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

can be had elsewhere, but he is ‘in’ the Warner box in Philip Catelinet’s
assumption of the Tuba Concerto. He was the soloist at the premiere. This
work should not be overlooked and you must surely treasure its central
Romanza. Recidivist that I am, I also commend highly the RCA-BMG
recording made by John Fletcher with Previn.

John Westbrook’s ‘high’ spoken English in An Oxford Elegy boils over with
oratory, exalted vocabulary and nostalgia; deeply moving stuff. Hodie and
the Tudor Portraits are both present and more than correct - richly enjoyable
in fact. They are present in classic and enjoyable versions jostling with the
great pillars such as Dona Nobis Pacem, the Five Mystical Songs,
the Serenade to Music (written for Henry Wood and sixteen named singers
and here in no fewer than three versions). Benedicite and even Sancta
Civitas only intermittently engage me as works but that’s just me.
The Mass leaves me unmoved; same rider. No such ‘doubts’ about Flos
Campi, which is another cherishable discovery if you do not already know it.
As they say, it is neither concerto nor choral piece. It is sui generis and
rough magic indeed. It must be heard.

The early Cambridge Mass and Folksongs of the Four Seasons are absent but
can be heard on Albion who will perhaps, one day, record another mysterious
score: RVW’s 35-minute work for soprano, choir and orchestra, The Future -
realised and premiered in Glasgow in recent years by Martin Yates.

Vaughan Williams’ film music is sampled in ‘Dawn Patrol’ from Coastal
th
Command, and the Prelude from 49 Parallel (a good, if slightly rushed
reading by Hickox). The Blake Songs for tenor and oboe also derive from a
film score. Sinfonia Antartica draws on the composer’s score for perhaps the
strongest of the films he served, Scott of the Antarctic (a frequent visitor to
the television screen). Not to be forgotten is that, when Decca recorded
the Sinfonia first, they prefaced each movement with John Gielgud intoning
the poems and texts (Shelley, Coleridge, Donne, Psalms and Captain Scott
himself) with which the composer superscribed each movement. They
remained in place to be heard on the Decca Eclipse LPs and then in Decca’s
mono Boult-box of the nine symphonies. Beyond Warner’s box you need to
find Dutton’s excellent complete music to Scott of the Antarctic and for a
more general and all-embracing conspectus, Chandos’s stunning three-CD
set of the RVW’s cinema music.

Downsides cannot be avoided, even if there are so many strengths in this
New edition. The documentation does not take you, even ankle-high, into the
composer’s life and the background to each work. For that there are many
mainstream books but why not, for a rapid summation, try Simon Heffer’s
life of RVW or for something more deeply delved and composer-personal,
John Alldritt’s Vaughan Williams - Composer, Radical, Patriot. It’s an
excellent read. The sung and spoken words are nowhere to be found in this
Warner New Collector’s Edition. You will need to run them to ground, if you
can, by Google searches.