Even fans of Gustav Holst may not know that he wrote 98 songs, and for many of those, this Albion release may be worthwhile on that basis alone. In all, the album contains 14 world premieres, most, but not all, by Holst. However, that's far from the end of the worthwhile things the album offers. A casual glance at the tracklist might make it seem a jumble of Holst and Vaughan Williams, but listen closely and you'll find a tightly constructed program that reveals much of the creative world the two composers shared, even as ...
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Even fans of Gustav Holst may not know that he wrote 98 songs, and for many of those, this Albion release may be worthwhile on that basis alone. In all, the album contains 14 world premieres, most, but not all, by Holst. However, that's far from the end of the worthwhile things the album offers. A casual glance at the tracklist might make it seem a jumble of Holst and Vaughan Williams, but listen closely and you'll find a tightly constructed program that reveals much of the creative world the two composers shared, even as they forged very different song vocabularies. That shared world included folk song, a specialty of Vaughan Williams but also cultivated by Holst, cradle songs, and even the odd genre of songs for voice and violin alone, represented here by the pastoral but intimate group of A.E. Housman settings by Vaughan Williams, Along the Field. This is itself not a common item, and it must rank among the most sparse and powerful settings of Housman's rather minimalist poetry. Another interest...
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