Serenade to Music
Exploring the sixteen singers chosen for the first performance
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Serenade to Music (1938)
Soloists and other solo works listed below
BBC Symphony Orchestra/Sir Henry Wood
rec. 15 October, 1938 (serenade), 1926-1948 (solo items)
Texts included
Albion ALBCD059 [74]

I admire the consistency, dedication and adventure that Albion Records has shown to Ralph Vaughan Williams, in particular its recording of VW’s complete folk settings, and those many premiere recordings it has added to the catalogue. Sometimes its excavations have involved alternative instrumentations, which will require caution from the prospective purchaser – do you really need The Lark Ascending with organ accompaniment, for example?

It has also delved back in recorded time and this recording reflects Albion’s exploration of historic material. We have yet another restoration of Henry Wood’s recording of the Serenade to Music – Albion has already released a later 1951 recording conducted by the composer.

Anyone interested in Wood’s recording will long since have acquired a CD transfer. For example, there have been competing transfers on Pearl, Dutton (at least two transfers) and Alto, to take just a few examples, though whether they are still available I can’t say. What I can say is that I happen to prefer Albion’s transfer to those of Dutton and Alto, which are both too bass-heavy.

It has selected from the discographies of the 16 singers and added an item by Keith Falkner, who was in America when the recording was made and was replaced by Robert Easton. John Francis, éminence grise of the Albion operation, suspects that eight of the records have not been re-released in a ‘modern format’ before – by which I assume he means CD but might mean cassette too. I make it six, but I won’t argue, as we might both be wrong.

Let’s take them briefly in the order in which they’re presented. Isobel Baillie is characteristically pure and precise in the Bach-Gounod, a recording I don’t believe has been reissued. I’ve always admired Elsie Suddaby for her own vocal discretion and she sings Somervell’s Shepherd’s Cradle Song finely. It was available on an Amphion CD, but in a dicier sounding transfer that preserved a few pops and crackles. The art of Eva Turner, resplendent here in Puccini, has been reissued in full on a 4-CD Pearl set. Lilian Stiles-Allen is recorded with Barbirolli but not in a more common HMV which can be found in the vast Barbirolli Warner box. You’ll find the same Edison Bell 78 as Albion transfer on a Barbirolli Society release SJB1999. One can admire her splendidly focused singing though also note the over-filtering in most of these Albion transfers that renders the music smooth whilst robbing it of room ambience.

I’ve never heard a transfer of Muriel Brunskill’s Serenade from Bantock’s Six Jester Songs, which makes its presence here welcome. Astra Desmond provides a degree of salonised solace with one of Marjorie Kennedy-Fraser’s Songs of the Hebrides arrangements; Mull Fisher’s Love Song with harpist Maria Korchinska in a 1941 Decca. Brunskill was a real contralto, but Desmond certainly wasn’t, though she was billed as one. She’s much nearer a mezzo. Margaret Balfour – another contralto – sings The Angel’s Farewell from the well-known live performance conducted by Elgar and captured by HMV’s engineers and reissued several times since. I’ve never come across Mary Jarred’s England other than as a 78 – it’s a stirring piece by Parry recorded live by HMV in 1938 and conducted by Hugh Allen.

The great Heldentenor and Handelian Walter Widdop is represented by a piece of fluff – Amy Woodforde-Finden’s A Request, but fortunately he remains resolutely masculine (it’s also to be found on Claremont CD). Parry Jones recorded a number of Warlock songs on 4 September 1934 and we have one here, robbed of Columbia’s studio acoustic (you’ll find them all on Divine Art, along with a raft of other important early Warlock recordings). Frank Titterton and Roy Henderson are their robust English selves in Puccini – this is from an early Decca – and I doubt this has been reissued. Heddle Nash sings Linden Lea on HMV in 1948. Perhaps he’s a little past his 1930s best, but hardly anyone phrases as plangently as he. Roy Handerson’s Loveliest of Trees from Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad, with Gerald Moore, has been reissued on Dutton. Henderson goes to town (and back) with his rolled ‘r’ and he’s slightly better represented – because more ‘present’ – in the Dutton transfer.

Nash is back for a collaboration with Robert Easton in Gounod’s Faust (Heavenly Vision). The whole opera, as recorded, has been reissued on Dutton and is conducted by Beecham. According to all accounts Easton was the best of company, a convivial presence always, but his voice is strangled and bleaty here. Divine Art transferred Pagliacci, a BNOC set conducted by Eugene Goossens (Senior) in 1929. Harold Williams, the ever-sonorous Australian bass-baritone, proves his mettle in the Prologue. Norman Allin’s Silent Noon, a Columbia of 1926 was reissued 40 years ago on a Golden Sounds tape (admittedly not very well), along with a good swathe of his discography. I find Allin a mystery. I know many have admired him but I’ve seldom heard a disc that I can unreservedly admire and certainly not this one – lugubrious and dull and he keeps breaking phrases. It, too, has been overprocessed, which doesn’t help. Finally, there’s Falkner’s Is My Team Ploughing? from A Shropshire Lad – Gerald Moore, the loyal pianist in a 1940 HMV. Falkner has decided the best way to convey this is for the dead man to be a mimsy public schoolboy and the living a Lawrentian he-man. Not very subtle, and a reminder that things weren’t always better in the Good Old Days.

After this, there’s the documentation briefly to consider. It’s excellent. There are full track details, names of accompanists and dates of recording though, to be finicky, these could all have been grouped together and not scattered. However, there are full song or aria texts and brief comments on each singer and song. It’s a decidedly classy product.

This release is aimed squarely at the historically-minded who may not have come across the Henry Wood Serenade to Music before – can there be anyone? – who can then enjoy the anthology of singers involved. I am very hard to please when it comes to transfers because I know there is a finite number of labels willing to take the chance on 78s and so should probably be more generous than I am. Still, I can’t change the way I feel about things and must be consistent.

Jonathan Woolf

Previous review: John France (February 2024)

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Contents
J.S. Bach (1685-1750) / Charles Gounod (1818-1893)
Ave Maria
Isobel Baillie (soprano), Berkeley Mason (organ), cello and harp
rec. 1930
Arthur Somervell (1863-1937)
Shepherd’s Cradle Song
Elsie Suddaby (soprano), Madame Adami (piano)
rec. 1926
Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)
Vissi d’arte from Tosca
Eva Turner (soprano), Sir Thomas Beecham and Orchestra
rec. 1928
Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945)
Santuzza’s Song from Cavalleria Rusticana,
Lillian Stiles-Allen (soprano), John Barbirolli and Orchestra
rec. 1927
Granville Bantock (1868-1946)
Serenade from Six Jester Songs,
Muriel Brunskill (contralto), with piano
rec. 1926
Marjory Kennedy-Fraser (1857-1930) / Kenneth MacLeod (1871-1955)
Mull Fisher’s Love Song
Astra Desmond (contralto), Maria Korchinska (harp)
rec. 1941
Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Angel’s Farewell from Dream of Gerontius
Margaret Balfour (contralto), Royal Albert Hall Orchestra, Royal Choral Society/Edward Elgar
rec. 1927
Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918)
England
Mary Jarred (contralto), with Massed Choirs/Hugh Allen
rec. 1938
Amy Woodforde-Finden (1860-1919)
A Request
Walter Widdop (tenor), Percy Kahn (piano)
rec. 1926
Peter Warlock (1894-1930)
There is a Lady Sweet and Kind
Parry Jones (tenor), W.T. Best (piano)
rec. 1934
Giacomo Puccini
Ah! Mimi, tu più non torni from La Boheme
Frank Titterton (tenor), Roy Henderson (baritone) and orchestra
rec. 1929 or 1930
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Linden Lea
Heddle Nash (tenor), Gerald Moore (piano)
rec. 1948
George Butterworth (1885-1916)
Loveliest of Trees from A Shropshire Lad
Roy Henderson (baritone), Gerald Moore (piano)
rec. 1941
Charles Gounod
Heavenly Vision from Faust
Robert Easton (bass), Heddle Nash (tenor), BBC Choir, BBC Symphony Orchestra/Thomas Beecham
rec. 1929/1930
Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857-1919)
Prologue from I Pagliacci
Harold Williams (bass-baritone), British National Opera Company’s Orchestra/Eugene Goossens (snr)
rec.1929
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Silent Noon
Norman Allin (bass), with piano
rec.1926
Serenade To Music
Isobel Baillie, Lilian Stiles-Allen, Elsie Suddaby, Eva Turner (sopranos)
Muriel Brunskill, Astra Desmond, Mary Jarred, Margaret Balfour (contraltos)
Heddle Nash, Frank Titterton, Walter Widdop, Parry Jones (tenors)
Harold Williams, Roy Henderson (baritones)
Robert Easton, Norman Allin (basses)
BBC Symphony Orchestra/Henry Wood
rec. 1938
George Butterworth
Is my Team Ploughing? from A Shropshire Lad
Keith Falkner (bass-baritone), Gerald Moore (piano)
rec. 1940