music by Ian Venables, Ralph Vaughan Williams & George Butterworth in a wonderful celebration of Venables’ seventieth birthday at Temple Music

Written for baritone (Gareth Brynmor John) and piano trio (Eva Aronian, Brian O’Kane, William Vann), Venables’ Out of the Shadows is meant by the composer to ‘give attention to numerous facets of male love’. His number of poems from Constantine Cavafy (in English translation), Horatio Brown, Tennyson, JA Symonds and Edward Perry Warren relatively introduced the out the concept additionally of the homosexual male gaze.

On the cafe door by Egyptian-born Greek poet Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933) is a celebration of the sight of a wonderful younger man which Bored by Scottish poet and historian Horatio Brown (1854-1926) incorporates a narrator bored at a complicated social event consistently reiterating ‘I favored their footman, John, the very best’. Returning to Cavafy, The mirror within the corridor was one other celebration of male magnificence, briefly glimpsed. The three verses from Tennyson’s In memoriam are bleaker, the poet gazing on the home the place ‘he’ isn’t there. JA Symonds’ translation from the Greek Anthology, Love’s Olympian Laughter offers us few particulars past the sheer festivity of a younger man in love. The cycle ends with Physique and Soul by American millionaire and creator Edward Perry Warren (1860-1928), a poem that celebrates love in a super kind.

The songs have been very a lot about pretty, someday luscious instrumental textures surrounding fairly plain, direct vocal traces that prioritised the phrases. Gareth Brynmor John sang with an admirably vibrant directness and an outstanding projection of the poetry. The long-limbed traces of On the cafe door moved from the contemplative to one thing extra outgoing with intense moments, reflecting a fleeting second relatively than an encounter. The busy textures of Bored implied fixed ahead movement, with sly harmonies within the cellular instrumental textures. Venables handled the poem completely significantly however I felt that the chorus of ‘I favored their footman, John, the very best’ may have benefited from a bit extra wit, there’s something slyly camp in regards to the comment. The mirror within the corridor moved from the evocative to one thing approaching a dance when the beautiful younger man seems within the mirror. Right here John did deliver out the sly storyline, and as with the primary Cavafy setting this was merely a second, the whole lot evaporated on the finish.

In memoriam which moved from gradual narration to one thing extra intense, tightened the screw step by step with John bringing out the sense of the hassle it took the poet to maneuver on (the poem is about Tennyson’s grief on the loss of life of a pal). Love’s Olympian Laughter had a full of life cellular texture, however appeared to take the poem a tad too significantly and I wished a bit extra enjoyable within the music. Lastly the calm unfolding traces of Physique and Soul resulting in an affirmative climax after which a gradual unwinding.

Following this, as one thing of a palate cleanser, we heard William Vann’s relatively efficient association of RVW’s Fantasia on Greensleeves for piano quintet, with Vann giving the piano a discreet function in supporting the wealthy string textures.

Tenor Gwilym Bowen joined the instrumentalists for Vaughan William’s On Wenlock Edge, his 1909 cycle of songs primarily based on poems from AE Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, the gathering of lyrical poems revealed initially in 1896 however whose themes took on larger resonance in the course of the Boer Battle and World Battle I.

On Wenlock Edge started with the instrumentalists giving the music a quick, vivid edge which was matched by the depth and vibrancy of Bowen’s tone. RVW’s atmospheric instrumental writing was terrific right here complementing the way in which Bowen leaned into the drama. From far, from eve and morning was extra relaxed, the performers suggesting that that they had on a regular basis on the earth. Bowen introduced flurries of depth to the center verse however total this was about relaxed magnificence. RVW’s instrumental writing appears to point out distinct indicators of the affect he picked up from his classes with Ravel. Bowen introduced out the distinction between the 2 voices, the lifeless man relaxed however direct, the dwelling one vibrant and intense. The lifeless man’s last verse was filled with vibrant nervousness, however Bowen made the dwelling man’s response appear nearly happy with himself that he had taken his lifeless pal’s sweetheart.

The beautiful instrumental textures of Bredon Hill set off the relaxed directness of Bowen’s supply with strongly mission phrases. The colourful climax had Vann bringing out the ‘noisy bells’ on the piano, while the ultimate verses have been bleak and contained, resulting in the noisy bells within the last verse together with Bowen’s remarkably intense supply. Clun flowed effortlessly, however Bowen’s tone right here was vivid, the phrases pointed even when the ultimate verses unwound to the extra mysterious.

There was a way on this efficiency of Bowen and the instrumentalists bringing a contemporary ear to the cycle, not merely transforming earlier interpretations. I discovered the outcomes contemporary and intriguing certainly.

After the interval, William Vann and Gareth Brynmor John gave us a considerate account of Love bade me welcome from the 5 Mystical Songs. John introduced out the narrative in George Herbert’s poem giving us vibrant tone within the last verse. Because of Vann’s high-quality piano taking part in, I didn’t miss the orchestral contribution however I did relatively really feel the dearth of the choir.

George Butterworth’s music cycle Love Blows because the Wind Blows was written in 1911-12, a interval after he left Oxford when he was writing criticism, composing and instructing. The cycle was written across the time of, or simply after, Butterworth’s settings of poems from A Shropshire Lad. The poems are by William Ernest Henley (1849-1903), remembered for his 1875 poem Invictus, and because of the amputation of a part of his left leg, the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Lengthy John Silver in Treasure Island (1883).