I believe these were the first recordings of the Magnificat and Vaughan Williams' one-act opera Riders to the Sea, although both have been done once or twice since.
Magnificat
The record begins with the shorter work of the two, Vaughan Williams' 1932 setting of the Magnificat.
The setting is unlike any other I have encountered, and was much influenced by Holst, per Vaughan Williams expert Michael Kennedy in his sleeve note. He relates it to the composer's Flos Campi, recently heard here.
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| Helen Watts |
"Religious exaltation, human feeling and oriental fervour [I believe he is referring to Holst's influence] are combined in the solo part and in the orchestral writing," Kennedy wrote. Contralto Helen Watts is entirely convincing as Mary. Christopher Hyde-Smith handles the important flute part, signifying the Holy Spirit, very well.
Riders to the Sea
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| The British Youth Opera production of Vaughan Williams' opera |
The principal work on the LP is the composer's near verbatim setting of John Millington Synge's Riders to the Sea. The play dates to 1904; Vaughan Williams finished his setting in 1932.
Both play and opera are extraordinary. Synge's powerful drama of life and death on the Aran Islands is concentrated and affecting, and Vaughan Williams' music complements and elevates the text, as he often did in his settings.
The play - like life on the Aran Islands, which Synge knew well - is bleak, being the tale of the widow Maurya, who has lost her husband and four songs to drowning, and will soon experience the deaths of her two remaining sons. Virtually all the play involves dialogue between Maurya and her daughters Cathleen and Nora, with her youngest son Bartley insisting on taking horses to the mainland to be sold, against his mother's wishes. One of the horses - the pale one - knocks him over a cliff to be drowned.
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| A 1906 Abbey Theater staging of the play, with the Allgood sisters - Annie, Sara and Molly (Máire O’Neill) |
"They are all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me," Maurya laments, while achieving peace in knowing that her pain is ended. "No man at all can be living forever, and we must be satisfied."
I am not doing justice to this compelling play - or Vaughan Williams' setting - so I urge you to read the cogent notes by Michael Kennedy on the sleeve. I also found this article on the symbolism in the Synge play to be illuminating.
Synge was an remarkable talent who died young. I might mention that I posted Cyril Cusack's mid-50s production of Synge's Playboy of the Western World a decade ago. It is still available.
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| Benjamin Luxon, Norma Burrowes, Margaret Price |
This performance could hardly be better. The soloists are all exemplary: Helen Watts as Maurya, sopranos Norma Burrowes and Margaret Price as Nora and Cathleen, and baritone Benjamin Luxon as Bartley. All were among the leading singers of the time in this repertoire. (Only Luxon is English. Burrowes is Irish; Watts and Price were Welsh.)
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| Meredith Davies |
In both works, the soloists are complimented by the eloquent performances of the women's voices of the Ambrosian Singers and the Orchestra Nova of London, as led by Meredith Davies. The conductor made only a handful of recordings, all of Vaughan Williams and Delius and all worth hearing. He also was closely associated with Benjamin Britten, and was music director of the English Opera Group for a few years. The production, with its relatively subtle use of sound effects in Riders to the Sea, is first-rate, too. It's amazing that so much atmosphere could have been created in Abbey Road Studio No. 1.
My UK pressing is far superior to the US equivalent, as usual, although it was by no means perfect. It did clean up very well. The text insert was missing from my copy of the UK issue, so I have appended the US equivalent. As usual with these posts, the download includes several reviews.
