CD Review
Vaughan Williams: The Sky Shall Be Our Roof
- Composer
- Vaughan Williams
- Artist
- Sarah Fox, Juliette Pochin, Andrew Staples, Roderick Williams; Iain Burnside, piano
- Label
- Albion
- Catalogue
- ALBCD001
- Reviewed by
- Ruth Squire
The operas of Vaughan Williams are generally little known. The Sky Shall Be Our Roof contains songs from Hugh the Drover, Sir John in Love and The Pilgrim’s Progress. The songs here have been transcribed for piano accompaniment by Vaughan Williams himself, and the majority are premiere recordings.
Immediately striking is the purity of the singing on the disc. Roderick Williams is no stranger to Vaughan Williams, having made several recordings for Chandos. The other soloists, whilst having far less Vaughan Williams upon their CVs, appear to be just as much at home in the repertoire. There are two duets on this disc (Ah! Love I’ve found you and Hugh my lover) sung here by Sarah Fox and Andrew Staples, both pieces are simply beautiful. The voices weave around each other, creating the amorous mood that the text dictates. Iain Burnside’s piano accompaniment is spot-on throughout, sensitively capturing the variety of moods.
My one complaint about the disc is that the sleeve-notes have failed to mention which soloist is singing each piece, so, instead, careful detective work is required to distinguish the singers.
About the operas behind these songs
All three operas represented here occupy an odd place in Vaughan Williams’s output, genuinely substantial stage works by a composer far better known today for symphonies, tone poems and hymn tunes, yet almost never staged. Hugh the Drover (a rural romance set around a boxing match and a village fair) and Sir John in Love (his own take on the Falstaff story from Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, source of the famous “Greensleeves” fantasia) both date from the 1920s; The Pilgrim’s Progress, based on Bunyan’s allegory and a project he returned to across four decades, wasn’t finished until 1951, near the end of his life. A recital like this one, gathering songs the composer arranged for voice and piano himself, is for most listeners the only realistic way of encountering this side of Vaughan Williams’s work at all, full stagings remain rare enough that piano-accompanied extracts are often the more practical, and sometimes the only, route in.
A note on this page
Originally published by Ruth Squire, recovered from mmmusic's own archive and reproduced here as the critic wrote it.
Questions about this recording
Which of Vaughan Williams's operas do these songs come from?
Hugh the Drover, Sir John in Love and The Pilgrim's Progress, the composer's own piano-accompaniment transcriptions of songs from all three, most of them premiere recordings.
Who are the soloists on this recording?
Sarah Fox, Juliette Pochin, Andrew Staples and Roderick Williams, accompanied by pianist Iain Burnside. Roderick Williams had already made several Vaughan Williams recordings for Chandos; the review found the other soloists just as at home in the repertoire.
Does the review have any criticism of the disc?
Yes, it notes the sleeve notes don't specify which soloist sings which piece, meaning listeners have to work out for themselves who is singing on any given track.
Is this recording still available to buy?
Yes, Albion's catalogue number ALBCD001 remains findable through classical retailers. We don't run an in-house shop, so we link out to Amazon and Discogs below.
