Okay! This title was released at the end of September 2016 … but I have only become aware of it in the last few weeks, and I am so pleased to now review it, for although other, if eminent, hands, have helped bring these scores to the fruition heard here, the music is wonderful, and unmistakably by RVW:
“Discoveries offers world-première recordings of works by Ralph Vaughan Williams and an insight into him as a visionary, as a romantic, as a patriot and as a lover. The works presented here span his entire working career, from the Three Nocturnes of 1908 to the Four Last Songs composed fifty years later. What unites them is that living composers have been involved in realising them in their present form. Three composers, Anthony Payne, Adrian Williams and Philip Lane, combine an understanding of Vaughan Williams’s music with a deep love of it, so that the additional writing enhances rather than conceals or modifies RVW’s original.“
Roderick Williams is in splendid voice for the ravishing Three Nocturnes, beautifully orchestrated by Anthony Payne, music that reminds of On Wenlock Edge and A Pastoral Symphony, rapt and searching. A Road All Paved with Stars owes to the opera The Poisoned Kiss, and we owe to Adrian Williams for nearly a half-hour of characteristic, often glorious, certainly vivid (Pilgrim’s Progress) orchestral music that’s as painterly as the title. Stricken Peninsula is a World War II propaganda-film score reconstructed by Philip Lane as ‘An Italian Rhapsody for Orchestra’ that includes an exhilarating march, effective scenic invention, and generous expanse. Four Last Songs (post-Strauss) are nostalgic and regretful, exuding solace and soulful loveliness, perfectly orchestrated by Payne, and sung by Jennifer Johnston with compelling intensity and deep conviction. It goes without saying that with Martyn Brabbins conducting the performances are superb, so too the recorded sound (BBC Maida Vale), and the excellent booklet includes the sung texts (welcome if not necessarily needed given these singers’ exemplary diction). Albion Records ALBCD028 is recommended without reservation … especially if you don’t have it (yet)!