David Munrow Conducts Purcell

My recent post of Henry Purcell's Funeral Music for Queen Mary led me to vow that I would post other music by that great Baroque composer. I can think of no better candidate than this recording from the Early Music Consort of London under its remarkable director, David Munrow.

The sessions took place in June 1975, less than a year before Munrow's early death at age 33.

David Munrow

Like the works on the previous recording, this music was composed to honor Queen Mary II of England. The earlier LP contained her funeral music; this one presents two brilliant birthday odes in her honor - selected from the six that Purcell composed, one for each year of her short reign (1689-94).

The earlier of the two on this record is Love's Goddess Sure, from 1692 and written in the French style. The latter, and perhaps better known, is Come ye Sons of Art, from 1694 and in the Italian style. Both enjoy brilliant performances by Munrow and ensemble.

Queen Mary and Henry Purcell

It is hard to overstate Munrow's importance in popularizing early music performance. This is particularly true of his advocacy of medieval and Renaissance compositions, although he also performed Baroque works. His forays into the later period were entirely successful, with this LP an eloquent example.

David Munrow and Christopher Hogwood

Munrow founded the Early Music Consort of London in the 1960s with keyboard player Christopher Hogwood. They gathered some of the best known names in early music performance, including violinist Simon Standage and viola da gambist Oliver Brookes. The vocal soloists for this record include soprano Norma Burrowes, countertenors James Bowman and Charles Brett, and bass Robert Lloyd. Bowman, who died earlier this year, was a particularly important figure and probably the most influential countertenor after Alfred Deller. His duets with Brett are a highlight of this record, but all the singers are splendid.

As Stoddard Lincoln wrote in Stereo Review, "In the performances ease prevails, nothing is forced, each phrase is lovingly turned, and gentle elegance wins the day."

Charles Brett and James Bowman

This recording, which comes from EMI's Abbey Road studios, does not have the sumptuous quality of the previous Purcell LP, which emanated from the very resonant King's College Chapel. It is very good in its own right, however, and well suited to the Early Music Consort's relatively small forces. My transfer comes from an excellent original HMV pressing.

Perhaps recognizing that Alfred Deller had produced a notable recording of Come ye Sons of Art years earlier, EMI commissioned its informative liner notes from Maurice Bevan, for many years the baritone soloist in the Deller Consort.

The download includes complete scans including the text booklet, photos, reviews, and a long Records and Recording article on Munrow based on an interview that took place during the recording of this LP.

To demonstrate some of the changes in performance practice over the years, on my other blog I've uploaded a 1931 recording of a Purcell suite from the London Chamber Orchestra and Anthony Bernard.

Vaughan Williams - 'Riders to the Sea' and 'Magnificat'

This is one of the more significant in my series of Vaughan Williams recordings from the original UK pressings, although the two works are not among his most popular.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.)

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.