Ancient And Modern

The latest edition of BBC Music magazine is a commemorative issue marking the 50th anniversary of the death of Ralph Vaughan Williams and the cover disk obviously ties in with that. The main work is a performance of Symphony No 5 recorded live at last year's Proms by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. A very fine performance of the symphony it is too but as is my practice I won't spend time discussing the work again here since it has been covered earlier in this blog. The other work on the disk is one that I do not have any other recording of however, the unaccompanied Mass In G Minor sung by the BBC Singers under the direction of Andrew Carwood. There is a timeless feel to the work, drawing on the English Tudor tradition but with subtle modern shadings and inflections. Comparisons could be made with the instrumental Tallis Fantasia, even down to the seperation of forces around the performing venue to produce special spacial and acoustic effects. It is also interesting to consider what performance practice should be for a work based on early music but written in the second decade of the twentieth century when accepted choral valuiues would have been very different. In the early 21st century, some might consider this performance from the BBC Singers to be a little heavy on the vibrato, particularly from the slightly matronly sounding female members. But maybe that is the sort of sound that RVW would have been familiar with anyway ? It certainly isn't sufficiently intrusive on this recording to distract from the profound spiritual quality of the work.