Vaughan Williams and Robert Palmer from Cornell

This Concert Hall Society release from 1954 demonstrates the high quality of music making in upstate New York at the time. It presents one of Vaughan Williams' most unusual works and compositions from Cornell University composer Robert Palmer.

The English composer is from an earlier generation than the American Palmer, but in fact Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on the Old 104th Psalm Tune was written at the same time as Palmer's Chamber Concerto, and both were nearly new when this record was made.

John Hunt

The fantasia oddly combines a barnstorming piano part (played here by John Hunt) with a choral hymn tune, somewhat in the manner of Beethoven's Choral Fantasia. This was almost certainly its first recording, and I don't believe there was another until an Adrian Boult-led performance in 1970. Also on the record are three of Vaughan Williams' most attractive folk song settings for choir.

Robert Palmer

Robert Palmer comes from the great American lineage of Roy Harris, Howard Hanson and others of the preceding generation, although he was as much influenced by Bela Bartok. "Robert Palmer exerted an influence on the development of American music far greater than his current obscurity would suggest," writes composer Steven Stucky in an insightful remembrance of his teacher available here. "Fashions come and fashions go, but Palmer's music is ripe for rediscovery by a wider public."

Robert Hull

The performances, all very good, are from the Cornell A Capella Choir and the Rochester Chamber Orchestra, led by Robert Hull, then a professor of music at Cornell. He left to become dean of fine arts at Texas Christian University in 1956.

In the Palmer concerto, violinist Millard Taylor was the concertmaster and Robert Sprenkle the principal oboe of the Rochester Philharmonic. Both were longtime faculty members at the Eastman School.