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Vaughan Williams - Pan’s Anniversary

£13.34

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Label: Albion Records

Cat No: ALBCD054

Barcode: 5060158190546

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Vocal/Choral

Release Date: 17th June 2022

Works

Tallis, Thomas

Why fum'th in sight

Vaughan Williams, Ralph

Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (arr. Timothy Burke for voices and strings)
Margery Wentworth
Pan's Anniversary (masque by Ben Jonson)
Peace, Come Away
To Sleep! To Sleep!

Artists

Timothy West (speaker)
Samuel West (speaker)
Mary Bevan (soprano)
Sophie Bevan (soprano)
Jess Dandy (contralto)
Johnny Herford (baritone)
Choir of Clare College, Cambridge
Britten Sinfonia

Conductor

William Vann

Works

Tallis, Thomas

Why fum'th in sight

Vaughan Williams, Ralph

Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (arr. Timothy Burke for voices and strings)
Margery Wentworth
Pan's Anniversary (masque by Ben Jonson)
Peace, Come Away
To Sleep! To Sleep!

Artists

Timothy West (speaker)
Samuel West (speaker)
Mary Bevan (soprano)
Sophie Bevan (soprano)
Jess Dandy (contralto)
Johnny Herford (baritone)
Choir of Clare College, Cambridge
Britten Sinfonia

Conductor

William Vann

About

In 2022, we celebrate Vaughan Williams’s 150th birthday, and the pinnacle of Albion Record’s contribution to this important milestone is this Pan’s Anniversary album, which contains five world-premiere recordings.

First, Ben Jonson’s masque Pan’s Anniversary, as adapted for the Shakespeare Birthday Celebration at Stratford-upon-Avon, with incidental music by Ralph Vaughan Williams. At the heart of the music are four great Hymns to Pan for three female soloists, chorus and orchestra. Time was short, so Vaughan Williams delegated some of the dance arrangements to his friend Gustav Holst. The work was performed just once, on Easter Monday 1905 and was reconstructed for this recording.

There are two spoken parts, played here by Timothy West and Samuel West. The soloists Mary Bevan, Sophie Bevan and Jess Dandy are joined by the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, and Britten Sinfonia under the baton of William Vann. Thomas Gould, the leader of Britten Sinfonia, plays some dances arranged for solo violin, and violin with side-drum.

In addition to this major work, we have three shorter (but lovely) premieres. Peace, Come Away and To Sleep! To Sleep! are two settings of poems by Tennyson that Vaughan Williams wrote when he was a student. They have been orchestrated and edited by the composer Christopher Gordon, who also orchestrated Margery Wentworth, a much later setting of poetry by John Skelton.

Finally, Timothy Burke made an arrangement of the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis for voices and string octet as an innovative lockdown project. This is the first full recording with the choir (of 39) and octet under one roof. The words set in the Fantasia were taken from the English translation of Psalm 65 from Archbishop Parker’s Psalter, the source for Tallis’s original setting, which is also heard on the disc.

This ambitious project has been generously supported by The Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust and by many members of The Ralph Vaughan Williams Society.

Sound/Video

Paused

1

Pan's Anniversary - Introduction
2

Pan's Anniversary - Presentation of the Nymphs
3

Pan's Anniversary - Well Done My Pretty Ones
4

Pan's Anniversary - Room for an Old Trophy of Time
5

Pan's Anniversary - Antimasque - Three Dances
6

Pan's Anniversary - How Like You This Shepherd
7

Pan's Anniversary - Hymn I - Of Pan We Sing
8

Pan's Annniversary - Entry of the Masquers
9

Pan's Anniversary - Hymn II - Pan is Our All
10

Pan's Anniversary - Pavan
11

Pan's Anniversary - Hymn III - If Yet If Yet
12

Pan's Anniversary - The Revels
13

Pan's Anniversary - Room Room There
14

Pan's Anniversary - Hymn IV - Great Pan
15

Pan's Anniversary - Final Music
16

Margery Wentworth
17

Peace Come Away
18

To Sleep To Sleep!
19

Why Fum'th in Sight (Tallis)
20

Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (arr. Burke)

Europadisc Review

This sesquicentenary year of Vaughan Williams’s birth is being celebrated with numerous releases from British labels in particular. Recordings of the symphonies – including a number of complete sets, some newly repackaged, others recently completed – abound. For less familiar fare, however, Albion Records (the official label of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society) leads the way. Its four-disc series of the composer’s complete English folksong arrangements has proved especially popular with collectors, and now that cycle’s leading light, pianist and conductor William Vann, has masterminded a very special anniversary release of Vaughan Williams rarities. Entitled, appropriately enough, ‘Pan’s Anniversary’, it takes its title from a work put together by the composer at rather short notice for the 1905 Shakespeare Birthday Celebration at Stratford-upon-Avon. A setting of Ben Jonson’s 1621 masque Pan's Anniversary, or The Shepherd's Holiday, it reflects the Edwardian fascination with Jacobean and Stuart masques, as well as a wider preoccupation with ancient Greek mythology, plus Vaughan Williams’s own immersion in English folk music.

As such, Pan’s Anniversary is a glorious collision of cultures: ancient Greece, Jacobean courtly entertainment, traditional English music and moments of unalloyed Edwardian grandeur. It’s a mixture, too, of orchestral, solo vocal, choral, instrumental and spoken word. And, owing to severe constraints of time, Vaughan Williams concentrated his own contribution on the four Hymns for solo voices, chorus and orchestra that provide the work’s musical backbone, as well as two brief orchestral movements: the Introduction and the ‘Loud Music’ that comes between the first two passages of speech. Other passages were entrusted to RVW’s colleague Gustav von Holst (as he then was), adapting traditional music as well as music by the English virginalist Giles Farnaby, and further traditional music was provided by a local troupe of morris dancers.

Just as the 1905 Pan’s Anniversary was the fruit of a collaborative effort, so William Vann is keen to stress the importance of his colleagues (performers, recording crew, and the painstaking musical transcriptions of the late P.J. Clulow) in this, the work’s first modern performance. The soloists are perfect: soprano sisters Mary and Sophie Bevan and contralto Jess Dandy (a true contralto, as Vann comments) make a splendid trio of Nymphs, while renowned father-and-son actors Timothy and Samuel West take the parts of the benign Shepherd and the somewhat earthier Fencer whose spoken contributions take the narrative forward and provide the springboard for the various dances and vocal numbers. (For older listeners, Timothy West’s embodiment of Edward VII in the 1972 LWT television series will add an extra Edwardian dimension.)

For lovers of Edwardian music and its earlier roots there’s so much to enjoy here. Holst’s contributions are assured and atmospheric, while the traditional tunes of the ‘Antimasque’ are played with a true feeling for the folk style by Thomas Gould, leader of the Britten Sinfonia, with support on the side drum from William Lockhart and further contributions from Thomas Hancox on piccolo and Joy Farrall on clarinet. The Britten Sinfonia’s orchestral contributions under Vann’s vivid direction are by turns imposing and admirably sensitive. But what makes this performance truly special is the combined soloist-and-choral collaboration in the four Hymns, as magnificent as any of Vaughan Williams’s better-known choral works, particularly with the radiant soloists and the young voices of the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge. The first Hymn has a splendidly relaxed, Arcadian feel to it, the more ceremonial second has distinct echoes of Vaughan Williams’s well-known hymn tune Kingsfold (aka ‘For all the Saints’), while the third has hints of Mendelssohn in Midsummer Night’s Dream mode as well as sparklingly atmospheric echo effects emphasised by the spatial opportunities offered in London’s Henry Wood Hall. Best of all, in Vann’s view, is the fourth Hymn, ‘Great Pan’, which provides a magnificent, searing climax to a set of pieces that could, he thinks, confidently earn its place as an independent concert cycle.

Although Pan’s Anniversary is clearly the focus of this celebratory disc, the ‘fillers’ are no less fascinating. Margery Wentworth, for baritone and chorus, sets a text by the Tudor poet John Skelton, whose poems Vaughan Williams set in his Five Tudor Poets in the mid-1930s. Whether Margery Wentworth was intended as an appendix to that set or as the beginning of a separate setting of songs from ‘The Garland of Laurel’ from which it is taken, this poetic tribute to the mother of Jane Seymour and grandmother of Henry VI is enormously touching in this performance of Christopher Gordon’s atmospheric orchestration by baritone Johnny Herford, the Clare College Choir and Britten Sinfonia.

Choir and orchestra are to the fore in two of RVW’s student works, both Tennyson settings written while he was still under the wing of Sir Charles Stanford. The elegiac Peace, Come Away is notable for its distinctive wind-instrument accompaniment (again, expertly realised by Christopher Gordon), while To Sleep! To Sleep! is the first complete Vaughan Williams work with full orchestra, a moving piece with a tremendous sweep to it. Both will be of unusual interest to lovers of the composer’s music.

More controversial, no doubt, will be Timothy Burke’s extraordinary choral arrangement of the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. Originally conceived as a lockdown performance for ‘digital’ performance by 135 singers, this recording represents its first ‘live’ performance and, for all but the stuffiest purists, it’s a triumph. Inspired by Samuel Barber’s Agnus Dei based on his own Adagio for strings, Burke’s arrangement for voices and string octet sets the (sensitively edited) text of Psalm 2 from Archbishop Parker’s Psalter of 1567, ‘Why fum’th in sight’ – the very text for which Tallis composed his original tune. With magnificent spatial effects, some stratospherically high soprano lines, glorious low notes from the basses, and a breathtaking moment where the strings alone carry the music, this performance immediately wins over the listener. The string effects of Vaughan Williams’s original scoring are brilliantly translated by Burke to the choral idiom, from sustained waves of sound to the quiet pizzicato of the opening. Add to this the fact that William Vann directs a performance that is evidently the result of deep immersion in the work’s performing tradition, perfectly paced, its many sections negotiated with great sensitivity and full awareness of its sonic and expressive impact, and what you have is a winner. The performance is preceded by a vibrantly forthright a cappella rendition of Tallis’s original psalm setting.

Like the Hymns from Pan’s Anniversary and Gordon’s orchestration of Margery Wentworth, Burke’s arrangement of the Tallis Fantasia deserves wider performance, even though its extraordinary vocal demands will necessarily limit it to professional and the very best of collegiate choirs. It’s the icing on the cake of a very special anniversary release, for which all its various contributors deserve the most enthusiastic congratulations. The detailed booklet notes and presentation are, as always from Albion, excellent.

Reviews

Despite its hasty creation early in 1905, Pan’s Anniversary – the most substantial work on this album of first recordings – includes several pointers to future developments. ... Margery Wentworth for baritone solo is characteristic in its wistful, flowing modality. Daniel Jaffé

BBC Music Magazine August 2022

With lovely contributions from the soloists, and the double act of Wests pere et fils in the spoken roles, this project has clearly been a labour of love for conductor William Vann, who draws everything together with great skill and sensitivity.

Choir and Organ

This whole disc has a feeling of being made con amore, and I’d like to congratulate all those involved, including Albion Records and the RVW Society, for such an enterprising and enjoyable production.

MusicWeb International

Exemplary production and presentation, as is customary from this source. RVW mavens will surely want to investigate.

Gramophone

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Condition	Description
New	Brand new item, only ever sourced from the official UK distributor. Usually seal-wrapped, although a minority of labels do not use seal-wrap.
Used - Mint	Used item in excellent condition. Not usually seal-wrapped.
Used - Good	Used item with some minor signs of wear and tear. Never seal-wrapped.
Used - Acceptable	Used item with obvious scuffs or cosmetic damage to the case or booklet. Never seal-wrapped.

Condition	Description
New	Brand new item, only ever sourced from the official UK distributor. Usually seal-wrapped, although a minority of labels do not use seal-wrap.
Used - Mint	Used item in excellent condition. Not usually seal-wrapped.
Used - Good	Used item with some minor signs of wear and tear. Never seal-wrapped.
Used - Acceptable	Used item with obvious scuffs or cosmetic damage to the case or booklet. Never seal-wrapped.

Vaughan Williams - Pan’s Anniversary

In stock - available for despatch within 1 working day

Despatch Information

Contents

Works

Artists

Conductor

Works

Artists

Conductor

About

Sound/Video

Paused

Europadisc Review

Reviews

Also Available

£13.34

£13.34

£13.34

£13.34

£9.15

Condition Information

Condition Information