Hodie & Fantasia on Christmas Carols
Album Title: Vaughan Williams Hodie (A Christmas Cantata) & Fantasia on Christmas Carols Composer: Ralph Vaughan Williams Auiou LP: 1965
1. Fantasia on Christmas Carols for baritone, chorus & orchestra (12:20)
2. Hodie (This Day), A Christmas cantata for soprano, tenor, baritone, boys' chorus, chorus & orchestra: (56:27)
Reviews Hodie (1954) is on a large scale, an ‘anthology’ cantata, with settings of Hardy, Herbert and Milton among others interspersed among the Biblical narration. It had a bad press when it appeared, but it is Vaughan Williams in his most lyrical mood surveying, at 82, his style as it developed from Wenlock Edge days to his ‘Antarctic’ period. The performance by David Willcocks and distinguished soloists is still the best on disc. -- Michael Kennedy, BBC Music Magazine
Reviews - By Scott Paulin The jubilant Yuletide works featured here were composed over a 40-year interval in Ralph Vaughan Williams's long career. Based on well-known tunes such as "The First Nowell" as well as carols that will probably be familiar only to British listeners "A Virgin Unspotted," "The Wassail Bough", the Fantasia on Christmas Carols 1912 is a short work for baritone soloist, chorus, and orchestra. The traditional carols have a harmonic tinge that will be familiar from other works by this composer, and the music brims with Christmas spirit, progressing from a rather dark opening cello solo through the buoyant voices of a boys' choir to the ringing bells of the celebratory conclusion. Hodie 1954 came near the end of Vaughan Williams's life; a much more ambitious work, an hour in length, it calls for mezzo-soprano, tenor, and baritone soloists along with large chorus and orchestra. No less jubilant in the end than the Fantasia, it embraces many aspects of the Nativity story, setting poems of John Milton, Thomas Hardy, and others along with biblical texts. Fanfares of annunciation give way to pastoral moods associated with the shepherds and a stirring march for the Three Kings, and there are also reminiscences of other late works by Vaughan Williams, especially his Seventh and Eighth Symphonies. Dame Janet Baker, Richard Lewis, and John Shirley-Quirk are the excellent soloists in this performance, led by Sir David Willcocks. The recordings of both works, made in the mid-1960s, have now been remastered and reissued as part of EMI's British Composers series. |
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