Here’s an enormously useful and enjoyable disc containing some well-known favorites (Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus, Toward the Unknown Region), alongside three rarities. The Voice out of the Whirlwind is a setting of words from the book of Job, and it consists of a vocal arrangement of the Galliard of the Sons of Morning from Ralph Vaughan Williams’ eponymous ballet. It works quite well in this vocal setting. Willow-Wood is a very beautiful cantata for baritone, (mostly) wordless female chorus, and orchestra to a text by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Composed in the first decade of the 20th century, the music’s sweetness and serenity anticipates the much later Serenade to Music.
The Sons of Light, a choral setting of three poems by the composer’s wife, Ursula Wood, comes from the very end of Vaughan Williams’ career, and it’s full of those glittering sounds familiar from the last three symphonies. It was recorded once before, for Lyrita, but never released on CD, and it deserves to be better known. The performances here are all very good. Baritone Roderick Williams shows some unsteadiness in his lower register but otherwise sings with excellent diction and warm tone. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic plays very well for conductor David Lloyd-Jones, and the chorus, if not the last word in precision, sounds quite comfortable with music that’s fun to sing and not too difficult to master. Very good sonics complete an essential addition to the Vaughan Williams discography. [2/8/2006]
