Ralph Vaughan Williams: Discoveries (2016)

These "discoveries" of music by Ralph Vaughan Williams have indeed never been performed before in the form in which they appear here. Each has been altered (mostly in the form of orchestration) by a contemporary composer, and there aren't any lost masterworks here; the recording is aimed mostly at Vaughan Williams fans. This said, there are a lot of those, and there's a good deal of music to interest them here. The music offers some fine Vaughan Williams tunes that for one reason or another haven't entered the Vaughan ... Read More

These "discoveries" of music by Ralph Vaughan Williams have indeed never been performed before in the form in which they appear here. Each has been altered (mostly in the form of orchestration) by a contemporary composer, and there aren't any lost masterworks here; the recording is aimed mostly at Vaughan Williams fans. This said, there are a lot of those, and there's a good deal of music to interest them here. The music offers some fine Vaughan Williams tunes that for one reason or another haven't entered the Vaughan Williams mainstream. The music spans his entire career, from the Three Nocturnes of the composer's student years around 1908, when he was a student of Maurice Ravel's and, to an extent, under his influence, to the Four Last Songs of the 1950s, with texts by the composer's wife, Ursula Vaughan Williams. Sample the opening of Procris, with its haunting use of solo instruments in the orchestration by Anthony Payne. The greatest rarity is surely the film score Stricken Peninsula, written for... Read Less