Nicky Spence, Julius Drake, Timothy Ridout, Piatti Quartet - Vaughan Williams: On Wenlock Edge / Four Hymns / The house of Life (2022)

The song cycles of Ralph Vaughan Williams recorded here, some of them including instruments other than the piano, are some of his most characteristic early works. One hears both his growing interest in folk song and his indebtedness to Ravel, put together with a piquant kind of youthful ambition. In the opening Four Hymns for tenor, piano, and viola, the generally agnostic or atheist Vaughan Williams composed some lovely examples in the rare genre of religious art song. The only really well-known set here is 1909's On Wenlock Edge, and the Britishness of the whole project is shown by the fact that the annotator does not feel it necessary to name the author of the texts. It is A.E. Housman, whose faux-simple verses are ideally suited to the natural voice of tenor Nicky Spence. The other song cycle is The House of Life (1903), to poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and here one senses most strongly, in the active piano parts and in other respects, the effects of Vaughan Williams' studies with Ravel. As an entr'acte, there are three delightful folk song settings, and Spence has a praiseworthy lack of affectation in these. The church sound is not right for these little works, but in general, this is an enjoyable RVW release with some songs that even the composer's enthusiasts may not know.