BaL 22.09.18 - Vaughan Williams: On Wenlock Edge

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

9.30
Building a Library: Vaughan Williams' On Wenlock Edge.
Vaughan Williams' song cycle, On Wenlock Edge, was premiered in London in November 1909 and sets six poems from the Victorian poet A. E. Housman's 1896 collection, A Shropshire Lad. His original setting of the Housman poems was particularly novel because of the scoring for tenor, piano and string quartet and, in 1924, he made an orchestral version of the cycle. The six poems from A Shropshire Lad that Vaughan Williams set are On Wenlock Edge, From Far, from Eve and Morning, Is My Team Ploughing, Oh, When I Was in Love with You, Bredon Hill, Clun.


Available versions:-

John Mark Ainsley, Nash Ensemble

Ian Bostridge, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Bernard Haitink

Steve Davislim, Benjamin Martin, Hamer Quartet

Richard Dowling, Joanna Smith,

Richard Edgar-Wilson, James Lisney, Coull Quartet

Gervase Elwes, Frederick B. Kiddle, London String Quartet

James Gilchrist, Anna Tilbrook, Fitzwilliam String Quartet

Andrew Kennedy, Simon Crawford Philips, Dante Quartet

George Maran, Ivor Newton, London String Quartet

Mark Padmore,, Huw Watkins, Members of Britten Sinfonia

Mark Padmore, Schubert Ensemble

Ian Partridge, Music Group of London

Peter Pears, Benjamin Britten, Zorian String Quartet

Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Graham Johnson, Duke Quartet

Robert Tear, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle

Steven Tharp, Jane Hawkins, Ciompi Quartet

Adrian Thompson, Iain Burnside, Delmé Quartet

Robert Wagner, Ilse Schumann, Color Quartet (download)

Alexander Young, Gordon Watson, The Sebastian String Quartet

[Pabmusic]

RVW's cycle was the second, after Arthur Somervell's 1904 cycle. George Butterworth and Timmy Jekyll were not impressed by Somervell's (George saying that the verse was "mainly pessimistic"). They challenged each other to set a poem in competition with Somervell - George wrote 'When I was one-and-twenty", though his eleven settings date mainly from 1909-1911.

Butterworth was impressed by RVW's cycle (though he thought that leaving out a verse of 'Is my team ploughing?' was high-handed - and told RVW so). George got the idea for Love Blows as the Wind Blows from On Wenlock Edge, though he used only voice & string quartet, no piano. It was first sung by Freddie Grisewood (yes, him!) and Frank Bridge's English String Quartet.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

As ever, Pabs, your encyclopaedic knowledge is an inspiration.

[Pabmusic]

As ever, Pabs, your encyclopaedic knowledge is an inspiration.

No - I'm an ace anorak.

Here's something interesting. Francis 'Timmy' Jekyll (Eton & Balliol) was older than Butterworth (Eton & Trinity) by three or four years, but he was crippled - one leg shorter that the other - and the two became friends, which lasted through university and beyond. He eventually became curator of music manuscripts at the British Museum for most of his career, but became a recluse, dying in 1965. He was the nephew of both Gertrude Jekyll the horticulturalist (who had a very good business going with Elizabeth Lutyens' father - he designed your house, she laid out the gardens), and also Canon Walter Jekyll of Worcester, who was a close friend of Robert Louis Stevenson - and who asked him if he could use the name for The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde. (It's pronounced to rhyme with 'treacle' - which is how Stevenson thought of it).

After the first performance of RVW's London Symphony (March 27th 1914), Jekyll hosted a party at his rooms off The Strand, at which the composer was mobbed by a crowd that included Holst, Bax, Butterworth, F. S.Kelly, W. Denis Browne and Rupert Brooke.

[Pulcinella]

I can't imagine Ian Partridge being bettered, but will listen to find out!
I seem to remember not liking Andrew Kennedy's voice on the version released as a BBC MM CD in 2008 (recorded in 2006: same pianist, but the Royal not the Dante Quartet), the only other recording of that version I have.
Much prefer the chamber to the orchestral version (I have Tear/CBSO/Rattle) too.

[Barbirollians]

I know he is a marmite singer but I really enjoy the Bostridge/Haitink . I suspect I may end up buying Anthony Rolfe Johnson's recording as he had such a wonderful voice.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

No - I'm an ace anorak.

A Cagoule, Pabs - a veritable cagoule.

[Pabmusic]

A Cagoule, Pabs - a veritable cagoule.

[BBMmk2]

Just saw in Amazon, that the Bostridge/Haitink one is going for £3.95! I have the one that’s in that big EMI Vaughan Williams Edition. I might have to buy another.

As it happens, MrsBBM looked for me, I can’t even look at the CDs on my shelves, these days, without being ill. I have the one already mentioned, plus the one on the Helios Label. C/W Ivor Guerney’s The Western Playland and Ludlow and Teme. Lovely settings, I might add. With Adrian Thompson, tenor, Stephen Varcoe , baritone, The Delmé Quartet and Iain Burnside, Piano.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Oh dear, Wenlock Edges have been breeding chez LMP! Might be because they know I'm a Shropshire lad!

Bought the Partridge on LP way back, even before I heard him sing it live in 1978 with the Mus Gp of London

Since then, without any urge to supplant this version, Ainsley, Kennedy and Thompson somehow have crept onto my shelves, mainly I think for their couplings. I do plead guilty to buying the Tear orchestral version way back, and I'm sure I found a 10" LP of this work in a charity shop (Maran?) but it may have been in too ineradicably cr*p condition to keep

[LMcD]

Presumably Philip Langridge with Howard Shelley is no longer available? Coupled with RVW's String Quartet in G Minor and the Ravel String Quartet.

[Beef Oven!]

I wonder how the orchestral/chamber aspect will be approached. Some days I prefer the orchestral, others the chamber. Glad there's both.

I very much doubt that I'll be adding to my collection - I'm very happy with my CDs of, Bostridge/Haitink LPO, Robert Tear/Rattle CBSO and Anthony Rolfe Johnson et al (for the chamber version).

[Pulcinella]

Presumably Philip Langridge with Howard Shelley is no longer available? Coupled with RVW's String Quartet in G Minor and the Ravel String Quartet.

I'd forgotten that version (filed under R for Ravel; originally my partner's but merged in with my collection when we moved here). Must give it a spin. Nice couplings.

[ardcarp]

Pabs, can you clear up the thing about Bredon Hill being in Worcestershire? (I know I've probably asked this before. Put it down to old age.)

[edashtav]

My sole version is the 10” Decca LP (1956) featuring the American German tenor George Moran. I rather like his trim, young-sounding voice and thin, perhaps wiry, recording ensures that the work sounds like ‘Ralph out of Ravel’. (Another admirer of Moran’s voice was BB who used him as Lysander in the original production of Midsummer Night’s Dream when PP had insufficient time to learn the part.)

I ought to bring myself into the 21st century but, for me, On Wenlock Edge is a curio, an example of a wobble in RVW’s development, and my antique,dense as a 78 rpm record, shrunken 10” LP captures the spirit of RVW “The Impressionist”.