George Butterworth and contemporaries

[Pulcinella]

I woz too quick for you, Pulcinella!

Indeed you were!
I thought that I'd deleted and reposted pdq, but you were even quicker!

[Pulcinella]

Interesting timing differences in the two Luxon recordings of the Shropshire Lad songs.
Argo/Decca: 3.26, 1.21, 2.29, 1.21, 2.29, 3.53
Chandos: 2.56, 1.09, 1.56, 1.21, 2.11, 3.17
Have just listened to the older one.
Fresher voice (understandably!) but I think I prefer what I heard yesterday; these are a little (self-?)indulgent in comparison, perhaps.

PS: Timings from the other versions I have.
Terfel (on The Vagabond): 2.40, 1.25, 2.02, 1.23, 2.25, 3.57
Varcoe (orchestrated): 2.28, 1.02, 1.52, 1.08, 1.44, 2.59
More variation than I would have thought.

[Serial_Apologist]

Interesting timing differences in the two Luxon recordings of the Shropshire Lad songs.
Argo/Decca: 3.26, 1.21, 2.29, 1.21, 2.29, 3.53
Chandos: 2.56, 1.09, 1.56, 1.21, 2.11, 3.17
Have just listened to the older one.
Fresher voice (understandably!) but I think I prefer what I heard yesterday; these are a little (self-?)indulgent in comparison, perhaps.

PS: Timings from the other versions I have.
Terfel (on The Vagabond): 2.40, 1.25, 2.02, 1.23, 2.25, 3.57
Varcoe (orchestrated): 2.28, 1.02, 1.52, 1.08, 1.44, 2.59
More variation than I would have thought.

I would have had the longest versions if they'd resulted in delaying the outbreak of WWI - someone might have been able to come up with a better solution than that particular conflict in the meantime!

[Stanfordian]

Interesting timing differences in the two Luxon recordings of the Shropshire Lad songs.
Argo/Decca: 3.26, 1.21, 2.29, 1.21, 2.29, 3.53
Chandos: 2.56, 1.09, 1.56, 1.21, 2.11, 3.17
Have just listened to the older one.
Fresher voice (understandably!) but I think I prefer what I heard yesterday; these are a little (self-?)indulgent in comparison, perhaps.

PS: Timings from the other versions I have.
Terfel (on The Vagabond): 2.40, 1.25, 2.02, 1.23, 2.25, 3.57
Varcoe (orchestrated): 2.28, 1.02, 1.52, 1.08, 1.44, 2.59
More variation than I would have thought.

Hiya Pulcinella,

In my view in his prime Luxon was peerless in this repertoire.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

In my view in his prime Luxon was peerless in this repertoire.

[DracoM]

Totaly agree about Luxon - great to hear him. So sad that such a voice is only now on record.

Got to say this has been a revelatory CoTW, quiet, thoughtful, beautifully presented and supported by excellent scholarly work from Prof Kennedy.
So good to hear alongside the sometimes meretricious loudness in the Proms.

[Nick Armstrong]

Hiya Pulcinella,

In my view in his prime Luxon was peerless in this repertoire.

Agreed

And agreed also Pulcinella that there is something special about the later Chandos performance, compared with the earlier one (which I now have).

[EdgeleyRob]

Totaly agree about Luxon - great to hear him. So sad that such a voice is only now on record.

Got to say this has been a revelatory CoTW, quiet, thoughtful, beautifully presented and supported by excellent scholarly work from Prof Kennedy.
So good to hear alongside the sometimes meretricious loudness in the Proms.

Totally agree with all of this

[EdgeleyRob]

Agreed

And agreed also Pulcinella that there is something special about the later Chandos performance, compared with the earlier one (which I now have).

Seconded

[Pulcinella]

This new Butterworth CD gets the full five stars for both performance and recording in September's BBC Music Magazine. The six Shropshire Lad songs appear in a new orchestrated version.

[Nick Armstrong]

This new Butterworth CD gets the full five stars for both performance and recording in September's BBC Music Magazine. The six Shropshire Lad songs appear in a new orchestrated version.

Alas it's not our Pabmusic's orchestration....

[teamsaint]

Alas it's not our Pabmusic's orchestration....

I was disappointed by that too.

here it is though.

[Pabmusic]

TS & Cali thank you. Mine still has a life - an international one. Performances I know about are 2 in London (Proms and RAM), Also Mons, Vilnius (twice!), Ottawa and Toronto in October. The Mons & Vilnius performances were of the whole 11 songs, the rest the 6.

[Pulcinella]

I think I have provided a link to this book before (but this time through Hive, not Amazon).
Might be of interest to those following this thread.

Trevor Hold: Parry to Finzi (Twenty English Song-Composers).

http://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Trevor-Hold/Parry-to-Finzi--Twenty-English-Song-composers/6939887

Just dug my copy out and found the bookmark at page 52, so another project is to carry on from where I left off.

[Serial_Apologist]

This is turning out to be a really fascinating week; I hand it to Dr Kate Kennedy for really doing her research on these composers.

The two figures who have unexpectedly bowled me over with their music have been George Butterworth, whom I had previously, wrongly, thought of as an understated, simpiified "version" of Vaughan Williams, and WD Browne, who must surely have had the most advanced approach to harmony of any British composer of that pre-WW1 era. The second-hand Germanicisms of Farrar and Coles, however interesting in their own right, feel somehow overdone and suffocating, and don't do it for me, I'm afraid.