Forty years ago British serialist Elisabeth Lutyens could deride the compositions of
Ralph Vaughan Williams as "cowpat music," but his reputation seems to be on the rise. CDs of obscure
Vaughan Williams compositions in various genres have appeared, and the centerpiece of this Naxos release of mostly choral pieces is Willow-Wood, a work that has not been heard since its premiere in 1909. Designated a cantata for baritone and orchestra, it also includes a women's chorus. One can understand why the work has been neglected: it exudes a musty Edwardian odor with its swooping vocalises for the female chorus and its lengthy Dante Gabriel Rossetti text, the very epitome of what modern poets were reacting against in their striving toward concision. However, these qualities make Willow-Wood a bit exotic after all this time, and baritone
Roderick Williams performs it to the hilt, articulating the text with superb clarity and shaping the 14-minute cantata coherently. Willow-Wood is the second track on the album, and the rest of the music, only somewhat better known, is chronologically arrayed around it. Toward the Unknown Region is a 1903 choral setting of a text by Walt Whitman, and American listeners will smile at this very British rendering of Whitman's chants democratic. But the two early works make a convincing pair, pointing toward the composer's mature language in their use of pentatonicism and modality, their charmed orchestration, and their hints of a mystical mood. The only instrumental work on the album, Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus, is a lyrical work on a level with the big
Vaughan Williams hits and treats folk music as subtly as anything he ever wrote; perhaps its neglect is due to uncertainty over the pronunciation of its title (say "DIVE-eez"). The program of the CD as a whole is convincing, and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra under
David Lloyd-Jones, even if they do not have the shimmering, churning quality of some of the classic
Vaughan Williams performances, put across everything the music has to offer. This disc is highly recommended for those who know the symphonies and other major
Vaughan Williams pieces and want to understand this twentieth century British giant better.