Vaughan Williams

BBC Symphony Orchestra, Soloists, Martyn Brabbins - Ralph Vaughan Williams: A London Symphony & Other Works (2017)

Ralph Vaughan Williams: A London Symphony; Sound Sleep;
Orpheus With His Lute; Variations for brass band (2017)
Elizabeth Watts (soprano); Mary Bevan (soprano); Kitty Whately (mezzo-soprano)
Royal College of Music Brass Band; BBC Symphony Orchestra; Martyn Brabbins, conductor

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 258 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 169 Mb | Artwork included
Genre: Classical | Label: Hyperion | # CDA68190 | Time: 01:12:25

Ralph Vaughan Williams' A London Symphony, otherwise known as the Symphony No. 2 in G major, was composed between 1911 and 1913, and premiered in 1914. After the score was lost in the mail, reconstructed from the short score and orchestral parts, and revised twice, the symphony was published at last in 1920, though it was ultimately replaced by the definitive version in 1936, with cuts to the about 20 minutes of the original material. This recording by Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Symphony Orchestra presents the 1920 version, along with three short works, Sound sleep for female voices and small orchestra, Orpheus with his lute for voice and orchestra, and the Variations for brass band. The filler pieces are delightful rarities that Vaughan Williams specialists will find of some interest, though most listeners will prize this recording for the energetic and colorful performance of the symphony, which is one of the composer's most vivid and satisfying works.
Ellen Nisbeth, Bengt Forsberg - Let Beauty Awake: Ralph Vaughan Williams, Rebecca Clarke, Benjamin Britten (2017)

Let Beauty Awake: Ralph Vaughan Williams, Rebecca Clarke, Benjamin Britten (2017)
Ellen Nisbeth, viola; Bengt Forsberg, piano

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~316 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 186 Mb | Artwork included
Genre: Classical | Label: BIS | # BIS-SACD-2182 | Time: 01:20:19

Despite her youth, Ellen Nisbeth has received acclaim both in her native Sweden and abroad and is one of the Rising Stars selected by the European Concert Hall Organisation (ECHO) for the 2017/2018 season. A former student of London's Royal College of Music, she hails from a family of Scottish origin and feels a particular affinity for the landscapes of Scotland, and for the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. For her first recital disc Ellen Nisbeth has devised an all-British programme which includes her own transcriptions of selected songs from Songs of Travel – Ralph Vaughan Williams's settings of poems by Stevenson. The songs intersperse the remainder of the programme, and one of them – Let Beauty Awake – has also lent its title to the entire disc. Together with the eminent pianist and chamber musician Bengt Forsberg, Nisbeth goes on to perform the impassioned Viola Sonata composed in 1919 by Rebecca Clarke – a well-known piece among viola-players, but deserving of a wider audience.
Jennifer Pike, Sina Kloke - Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending; Suite of Six Short Pieces; The Solent; Fantasia (2016)

Ralph Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending;
Suite of Six Short Pieces; The Solent; Fantasia (2016)
Chamber Orchestra of New York, conducted by Salvatore Di Vittorio
Jennifer Pike, violin; Sina Kloke, piano

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 229 Mb | Artwork included
Genre: Classical | Label: Naxos | # 8.573530 | Time: 01:02:23

Vaughan Williams withdrew or destroyed many works from his earliest period, but he considered The Solent, with its haunting opening and luminous polyphonic textures, as among his ‘most important works’. The Fantasia is his earliest known piece for solo instrument with orchestra and contains some of his most bravura writing, contrasting with the graceful geniality of the Suite. Depicting a sublimely pastoral scene and now one of the best loved pieces ever written, Vaughan Williams called The Lark Ascending a ‘romance’, a term reserved for his most profoundly lyrical works.
Sir Neville Marriner, Barry Wordsworth, Adrian Boult - Ralph Vaughan Williams: Orchestral Works (1999) 2CDs

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Orchestral Works (1999) 2CDs
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Neville Marriner
New Queen's Hall Orchestra, conducted by Barry Wordsworth
London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Adrian Boult

EAC | FLAC | Tracks (Cue&Log) ~ 644 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 347 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical, Orchestral | Label: Decca | # 460 357-2 | Time: 02:25:54

This two-CD collection offers a strong, masterfully performed selection of Vaughan Williams' shorter orchestral works. All the best-known pieces are here–the Tallis Fantasia, the Fantasia on Greensleeves, The Lark Ascending, Dives and Lazarus–as well as lesser-known but equally beautiful works such as the Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1, the Concerto Grosso and the Oboe Concerto. Disc One is devoted to performances by Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields; on Disc Two, Barry Wordsworth and the New Queen's Hall Orchestra take over, except for one selection–the fiercely dramatic Partita for Double String Orchestra–performed by Sir Adrian Boult and the London Philharmonic. I did not think there could be a more beautiful performance of The Lark Ascending than the one by Boult and Hugh Bean, but the recording here by Marriner and Iona Brown is at very least its equal. For anyone who loves the music of Vaughan Williams, or for anyone who wants to get acquainted with this great and underrated composer, this double-CD set is a must.
James Judd, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra - Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on Greensleeves (2003)

James Judd, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra - Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on Greensleeves; Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis; Concerto Grosso (2003)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 245 Mb | Total time: 60:20 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Naxos | # 8.555867 | Recorded: 2001

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) may not have begun the trend toward English pastoral music in the early twentieth century, but he was certainly one of the movement’s leading practitioners. Starting as early as 1900 with his aptly named Bucolic Suite, the man continued to produce charming, serene, idyllic tunes for full orchestra, strings, and chorus right up until the time of his death. In this Naxos collection, English conductor James Judd leads the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in some of the composer’s most famous short works.
Chamber Orchestra of Europe - Lachrymae - Music for Strings: Purcell, Britten, Part, Vaughan Williams, Walton, Tippett (2012)

Lachrymae - Music for Strings: Purcell, Britten, Pärt, Vaughan Williams, Walton, Tippett (2012)
Chamber Orchestra of Europe; Nicolas Bône (viola)
Douglas Boyd, William Conway, Richard Egarr (conductors)

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 288 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 175 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical | Label: Apex | # 2564 66070-5 | Time: 01:12:00

This CD is one of two Warner Classics recordings taped live during a series of concerts presented by the world renowned Chamber Orchestra of Europe during Easter Week 2003. The title for the concert series, presented in London, was Passions and Diversions as the works relate to different aspects of reflection and inspiration. In this program, Britten and Stokowski interpret works by Purcell in their own idioms; Britten draws on his English musical roots to inspire an original work, Lachrymae and Britten himself is the source of inspiration in Pärt’s Cantus. In the case of the Vaughan Williams, Tippett and Walton works, the inspirations are other composers and literature. The Chamber Orchestra of Europe has been described in The Financial Times as “the best orchestra in Europe.” The COE was founded in 1981 and has a membership of 50 musicians from 15 countries who perform together mainly in continental Europe and occasionally in the US and Japan. Since its inception, it has appeared with the world’s leading conductors and soloists, and its recordings have consistently won the highest praise and international prizes, including three Gramophone “Record of the Year” awards.
Hilary Hahn, London SO, Sir Colin Davis - Elgar: Violin Concerto; Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending (2004)

Edward Elgar: Violin Concerto; Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending (2004)
Hilary Hahn, violin; London Symphony Orchestra; Sir Colin Davis, conductor

EAC | FLAC | Tracks (Cue&Log) ~ 291 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 151 Mb | Scans ~ 165 Mb
Classical | Label: Deutsche Grammophon | # 00289 474 5042 | Time: 01:06:04

Elgar’s Violin Concerto has a certain mystique about it independent of the knee-jerk obeisance it has received in the British press. It probably is the longest and most difficult of all Romantic violin concertos, requiring not just great technical facility but great concentration from the soloist and a real partnership of equals with the orchestra. And like all of Elgar’s large orchestral works, it is extremely episodic in construction and liable to fall apart if not handled with a compelling sense of the long line. In reviewing the score while listening to this excellent performance, I was struck by just how fussy Elgar’s indications often are: the constant accelerandos and ritards, and the minute (and impractical) dynamic indications that ask more questions than they sometimes answer. No version, least of all the composer’s own, even attempts to realize them all: it would be impossible without italicizing and sectionalizing the work to death.
Richard Hickox, Northern Sinfonia - Ralph Vaughan Williams: Riders to the Sea; Household Music; Flos Campi (2015)

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Riders to the Sea; Household Music; Flos Campi (2015)
Soloists, Northern Sinfonia, conducted by Richard Hickox

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 296 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 183 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical, Opera | Label: Chandos | # CHAN 10870X | Time: 01:18:42

As he proved with his recording of A London Symphony – Record of the Year, Gramophone Awards 2001 – Richard Hickox was a Vaughan Williams specialist. This reissue of an original 1995 recording features such lesser known works from the composer as Household Music and Flos Campi. Alternating between the passionate and the tortured, between long-breathed lyricism and moments of obvious pain, Flos Campi has never really found itself in the mainstream concert repertoire, maybe because of its title, misleadingly suggesting jolly music. Household Music has equally suffered from its title, rather an off-hand one for pieces that at their best show the composer’s brilliance as an arranger. Riders to the Sea, however, is a masterpiece, seen as the finest as well as the most concentrated of Vaughan Williams’s works for the stage, conjuring up multiple layers of emotional response to the natural world, a losing battle with the sea, and the God which rules it, for the islanders in the North Atlantic.
Martyn Brabbins, BBC Symphony Orchestra - Ralph Vaughan Williams: Symphonies Nos. 6 & 8 (2022)

Martyn Brabbins, BBC Symphony Orchestra - Ralph Vaughan Williams: Symphonies Nos. 6 & 8 (2022)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 305 Mb | Total time: 74:02 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Hyperion | # CDA68396 | Recorded: 2021

‘Essential listening’ … ‘fabulously assured’ … ‘unequivocally excellent’: just a few of the critical superlatives earned by Martyn Brabbins’s magnificent Vaughan Williams symphony cycle. In this, the penultimate release of the series, two of the late symphonies are coupled with more rare RVW.
David Lloyd-Jones, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra - Vaughan Williams: Willow-Wood; The Sons of Light (2005)

Roderick Williams, David Lloyd-Jones, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra - Vaughan Williams: Willow-Wood; The Sons of Light (2005)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 259 Mb | Total time: 61:51 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Naxos | # 8.557798 | Recorded: 2005

This release was an "Editor's Choice" in Gramophone Magazine (12/05) and features the world premiere recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams's "Willow-Wood" as well as the return to the catalog of his "The Sons of Light." Both are cantatas dating from 1909 and 1951 respectively. The former is a passionate outpouring for baritone, women's voices and orchestra that's not to be missed. Drawn from Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The House of Life, it consists of four interlinked sonnets, which describe a dreamlike, amorous encounter by a rustic well.