Roderick Williams baritone
ALBION ALBCD070
This disc, one of the finest from the Albion stable, features Roderick Williams in magnificent voice on every track. It is an essential purchase that will surely give immense pleasure to many. All the works are first recordings in their formats, and the CD finely rewards those who have been eagerly awaiting the singer’s account of the Five Mystical Songs. This work is presented in the composer’s own solo version from about 1925, accompanied by piano and string quintet.
The instrumentalists play with vivid commitment, and this scoring proves to be quite as transcendent as any of the numerous issues available with choir and orchestra. There are inevitably one or two slight changes to the more familiar vocal line of the choral version. The declamatory ‘Rise heart’ is hugely authoritative and moving; the lovely central ‘Love bade me welcome’ most beautifully done; the final ‘Antiphon’ is breathtaking.
This set is followed by two very early songs, When I am dead, my dearest (1903), and Dreamland.(1905). They receive their first recordings by a male singer, subtly accompanied by Vann. Roderick Williams made the first recording of the curious Rossetti cycle Willow-Wood in 2005, then in its 1909 orchestral guise, for Naxos. It is closely connected to RVW’s Rossetti song-cycle, The House of Life, since the texts are drawn from the same source. On this new CD it is given in its original 1903 version for voice and piano. I still find it a little over-perfumed, and apparently the composer also remained dissatisfied, but it has many haunting moments and repays repeated listening.
Roderick Williams was also involved in the four Albion discs that preserved the entire corpus of RVW’s folksong arrangements. He subsequently chose eight, transcribing their original modal piano accompaniments for string quartet. These are premiere recordings in their new guises, and (apart from She’s like the swallow) are likely to be unknown to any who have not heard the complete collection.
The tune of Barbara Ellen is quite different to that with which it is frequently associated in settings by such as Quilter; and while The Saucy Bold Robbers was collected by RVW in King’s Lynn in 1905, it seems to have escaped the notice of anyone else. All the songs are strophic, and none modulate; but any initial reservations that these apparent restrictions might prove wearisome are immediately swept away by the singer’s highly engaging gifts of narrative and vocal characterisation. As encores, they would be a riot.
The recording is excellent, and the booklet well up to Albion’s generous standards, replete with notes, colour photography and all the texts; although the latter are almost entirely unnecessary, since Williams’ diction is crystalline throughout.
Review by Andrew Plant