Grace Williams (1906-1977)
Songs
Jeremy Huw Williams (baritone), Wendy Hiscocks (piano)
rec. 2022, Cooper Hall, Selwood Manor, Frome, UK
Naxos 8.571384 [78]
When reviewing an earlier disc from Lorelt of Grace Williams songs from Jeremy Huw Williams, I commented that there was a vast reserve of unrecorded music from the same source and looked forward to a further instalment. It has taken some while, but now Naxos and the English Music Society have taken up the baton for a further selection on CD, and the twenty-seven tracks on this disc (plus a supplementary track available only on download) are all advertised as “world première recordings.” In fact one of the songs here, Cariad cyntaf, was included on the earlier disc; but we need hardly quarrel about that.
Given that most of the composer’s larger-scale songs (including the quasi-operatic scena My last duchess and a number of cycles and linked settings) were included on the previous release, it is not any wonder that what we have here is essentially a collection of miniatures including both original songs and folksong arrangements from a wide variety of countries. Only three of the items are over five minutes in length, and several run for less than two minutes. But Grace Williams was as skilful a miniaturist as she was a master of larger forms, and many of the individual tracks here are pieces of pure enchantment. Not least of these are the folksong settings such as Ffarwel i Langyfelach [track 5], a beautiful melody given a sympathetic treatment worthy of Britten with a heartfelt piano postlude. By contrast there are some sprightly accompaniments to such songs as O rare Turpin [track 13], a setting which varies its effects delightfully to reflect the moods of each verse. Others, such as Bonny at morn [track 15], span the moods between the two extremes.
There are however still some large-scale works to be found in this recital, including some which were originally written for orchestral accompaniment – Stand forth, Seithinen [track 4], with a text drawn from Welsh mythical sources, provides a real challenge in the transcription for Wendy Hiscocks and the more strenuous passages sound like very hard work for Williams. Fairground too is a heavyweight exercise [track 9], and its appositeness or otherwise to the poem by Sam Harrison (1920-98) is impossible to judge as the text of the verse is not given; it is the longest single item on the disc.
The setting of Edward Thomas’s Lights out [track 26] is a minor masterpiece, an original song that chills the blood with its image of sleep as the road to death. This is a song that suits both performers ideally, and it is rendered superbly with the dramatic punch and bite required in lines such as “Here love ends”. It is at moments like this that Jeremy Huw Williams sounds most like a baritone equivalent of Peter Pears; and Grace Williams with her unexpected modulations encompasses the whole range of the poem. She later reworked the setting for an accompaniment of trumpet and harp; it would be fascinating to hear.
There are perhaps inevitably a couple of misses. The setting of Shakespeare’s Fear no more the heat o’the sun [track 27] pales by comparison with earlier settings by Finzi and Vaughan Williams, and does itself no favours by omitting the chilling closing lines of the original verse. The setting of Ben Jonson which opens the disc, Slow, slow, fresh fount [track 1], also serves to illustrate the composer’s lack of sympathy with Elizabethan verse. The baritone here takes Cariad cyntaf [track 23] slightly more slowly than in his earlier 2016 recital, to the song’s advantage.
The earlier disc of Grace Williams songs was unfortunately marred by a recording that did not do real justice either to the music or the performances, being too closely observed for comfort in a decidedly unresonant acoustic. And it is equally unfortunate that the acoustic and recording here, although now transferred to the other side of the Atlantic, suffers from many of the same faults; the close placement of the microphones means that Jeremy Huw Williams’s baritone sounds dry and lacking in body, and the piano sound has a clangorous ring that sounds oddly as if coming from a different and more resonant venue altogether. The pianist herself is credited at the producer and both she and the singer are jointly responsible for editing, so the result is clearly deliberate.
Full texts are generally included in the booklet, with some odd exceptions: I simply cannot understand why the version of the Magnificat from the King James Bible [track 7] is cited as omitted “due to copyright restrictions,” and the absence of the poems by Sam Harrison and Laurence Whistler [tracks 9-10] is equally curious. These are the only two poems currently still in copyright, and I cannot see why the holders of the rights should have withheld them from publication. Several of the folksong arrangements come with translations by the pianist herself, and Graeme Cotterill has contributed a two-page essay on the music even when he is unable to establish dates for some of the pieces.
Grace Williams’s legions of admirers (of whom I consider myself to be one) will be grateful to the artists and to Naxos for furnishing a second volume of her considerable output of songs. Those who warm to her expressive treatment of both the English and Welsh languages will also wish to search out the earlier recital on Lorelt, which still remains available. For the next instalment (and I do hope there will be one) could we perhaps explore the songs with instrumental and orchestral accompaniment, with possibly a fully-scored version of My last duchess, which still sounds to my ears like a vocal scena desperate looking to make an operatic impact?
Paul Corfield Godfrey
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Contents
Slow, slow, fresh fount (1925)
I had a little nut tree (1930)
Green rain (1933)
Stand forth, Saithenin (1935)
The Song of Mary (1939)
Shepherds watched their flocks by night (1948)
Fairground (1949)
Flight (1949)
When thou dost dance (1951)
Dwfn yw’r môr (1955)
Lights out (1965)
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun (1967)
Folksong arrangements
Ffarwel y Langyfelach: Llangynwyd: A Lauterbachh: Le chevalier de guet: O rare Turpin: Il était une bergère: Bonny at morn: The song of the flax: Mary, Mary, maiden: Dalmatian lullaby: The pearly Adriatic: Y delyn pur: Y fwyalchen: Cariad cyntaf
