Soloists/London Philharmonic Orchestra/Richard Hickox
CHANDOS CHAN 10728X 54.34
This reissue is part of a series to commemorate Richard Hickox, but is very welcome in its own right. Vaughan Williams’ operas are undervalued today – though a new production of Pilgrim’s Progress by ENO this autumn is timely. A Cotswold Romance is effectively a shortened version of Hugh the Drover, a work I first encountered when involved in a production at St Pancras Town Hall in the late 1960s. It is a remarkable piece, looking back to the security of Edwardian and even Victorian composition but also forward to music theatre of the later twentieth century.
Rosa Mannion and Thomas Randle bring an innocent clarity to their characters and the approach is brisk, bright and captivating.
The Death of Tintagiles is all but forgotten today, and so this recording is all the more valuable. A rare venture into the theatre, the play by Maeterlinck, for which this was the incidental music, was a disaster. Vaughan Williams vowed never to write for the theatre again and so this score vanished. A pity for it pre-echoes both his opera Riders to the Sea and the Sinfonia Antarctica. Its brooding darkness is unlike anything until the end of his career. A welcome reissue. BH
