Grace Williams (1906-1977)
Four Illustrations for the Legend of Rhiannon (1939/1940)
Castell Caernarfon (1969)
Ballads (1968)
Sea Sketches for String Orchestra (1943/1944)
BBC Philharmonic/John Andrews
rec. 2024, BBC Philharmonic Studio, Salford, UK
Reviewed as a 16-bit/44kHz download
Resonus 10349 [73]

Most collectors will be aware of Grace Williams. There are two essential Lyrita CDs that have been available for years containing vintage 1970s performances of some excellent music under the batons of Charles Groves, Vernon Handley and other capable conductors. Chandos also gave us a record before the dawn of the CD era of vocal works under Richard Hickox that is of course now available on CD. More recently we have had chamber music from Naxos.

This CD is timely, however, as it offers new and important readings of the Sea Sketches and Ballads from a very exciting conductor and orchestra team, as well as a first recording of a must-hear early work.

Grace Williams, Elizabeth Maconchy, Elisabeth Lutyens and Imogen Holst were all, remarkably, born within a year of each other and all studied at the RCM. They all produced very different music after their studies with Vaughan Williams and others, and we in Britain should feel proud of their accomplishments. 

Grace Williams was Welsh born and bred and after studying in London she went to Vienna for post-graduate work with Egon Wellesz. Her roots in Glamorganshire mean that themes, stories and legends from Welsh literature all find an outlet in much of her music. In this review, I am going to deal with the four pieces it offers in a slightly different order from how they appear on the record (and in the header above).

Rhiannon is a substantial, twenty-seven-minute, four-movement symphonic poem. Rhiannon in Welsh mythology was a kind, beautiful, intelligent maiden who married Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, despite a previous betrothal to another nobleman. She bears a son Pryderi who is abducted. The blame falls on Rhiannon and she is ostracized. Eventually mother and son are reunited as Pryderi returns, now fully grown, ready to play his part in the royal dynasty.

Williams’ score weaves a rich tapestry of colour throughout the score, which takes us through the fable of Rhiannon. There are lovely dances, evocative melodies and exciting moments in what I find to be a delightful character portrait in sound masterfully executed by this combination of orchestra and conductor. Themes are developed with assurance and skill and there is a technique I hear in the orchestration that exhibits her academic pedigree. The slow third movement is haunting and the way Williams moves from its conclusion to the start of the joyful finale is uniquely lovely. I cannot find any reference to another commercially available recording, but you can find a radio performance online from 2016 with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Perry So (more about this later).

Sea Sketches will be more familiar to readers. These five seascapes, 19 minutes in total duration, need fear nothing in comparison with the many other examples of composers portraying the sea in all its aspects in the orchestra. If we restrict ourselves to just British composers beginning with B we can name Bax, Bantock, Bridge, Britten – and I could go on. Williams in wartime created a piece of genius (using a strings palette alone) that has been cherished by many since, yet strangely has received less interest on record than you would think. The last movement, Calm Sea in Summer, is a very special piece to me. In this performance, John Andrews paces everything so well. I have never heard it so perfectly done. Try Channel Sirens as a sampler; the sound is ravishing through the whole work. In March 1942 Britten returned in convoy across the Atlantic to England. I wonder if Williams was close to him over the next three years as he was writing Peter Grimes. Both pieces were being conceived in the same air so to speak and although completely original you can feel this as you listen again to the Sea Sketches. It is an important work in our heritage and I hope this performance allows many more people to recognise this.

Ballads for Orchestra is a much later work. It is inspired over its four movements by medieval Welsh lore and has a duration in this performance of 17 minutes. As in the earlier music, Grace Williams is a master crafter of themes and their development. The tunes are memorable and they are often counterbalanced by harmonies and textures both unexpected and glorious in their effect. Vernon Handley made a great version of Ballads in 1979 for the BBC (re-issued on Lyrita) but this new version surpasses even that one in its excellence of both articulation and execution. Hear the balance between sections John Andrews gets in the funeral march (track 7 from 2:30) and its crescendo build up over its expanse. In the dream-like Andante, I hear a sultry spun melody that puts me in mind of that spinner of a tune par excellence, Malcolm Arnold. 

The remaining ten minutes of this disc gives us the occasional piece Castell Caernarfon written for and first given at the investiture of Charles as Prince of Wales in 1969. Full orchestra and all the pipes and drums of the pomp of majesty are replicated here in a Salford dockside studio to great effect. The piece doesn’t match the quality of the other three pieces, but the disc gives it its premiere on record (I understand there is an unreleased EMI taping of a Charles Groves LSO performance in the archive).

The BBC Philharmonic has been an orchestra blessed with opportunities to record ever since the dawn of the digital era. I note they have made at least twenty records since Covid-19 and have built up a huge and valuable catalogue even in the last year, giving us goodies from Adrian Sutton, Gerard Schurmann, Gerhard, Coates, Shostakovich and others. This new disc complements and enhances the list hugely. 

What can I say about the conductor John Andrews? I have been hugely impressed with his work. Rare Sullivan on the Dutton label (review) (review) (review). Smyth (review), Stanford (review) , Arnold (review) here on Resonus. Exciting sojourns into the baroque world of Arne (review) and memorably Lampe (review). He has even given us music by Williams’ colleagues Lutyens and Maconchy.

The combination of orchestra and conductor is a match made in heaven and I hope they will be reunited soon.

As far as Grace Williams is concerned, interested readers would do well to look at the Grace Mary Williams YouTube page. There are lots of rare performances of works that are still unrecorded to hear: the First Symphony, the Violin Concerto, the Sinfonia Concertante for piano and orchestra and the Missa Cambrensis, as well as alternative versions of other major works including ones on this disc. Each page also links to the Grace Mary Williams website, which is excellent. They even promise to send interested readers free mp3 copies of the performances if you email them.

In an ideal world Resonus would bring us the BBC Philharmonic and John Andrews with more music from the oeuvre of Grace Williams in a mainstream release. Dare we hope? 

Philip Harrison

Buying this recording via a link below generates revenue for MWI and helps us keep free access to the site