The unplayed early works of Ralph Vaughan Williams have been a tantalising might-have-been for lovers of RVW’s music. Now, building on the success of their recording of the impressive Heroic Elegy & Triumphal Epilogue (CDLX 7237), Dutton Epoch couple world premiere recordings of RVW’s delightful Serenade in A minor (1898) and the Bucolic Suite of 1900. These tuneful discoveries are presented together with cherishable unknown scores from his maturity. David Matthews completed and orchestrated the slow movement of the unfinished Cello Concerto that Vaughan Williams was writing for Casals in the 1940s as the haunting Dark Pastoral, championed here by cellist Guy Johnston, whilst the orchestral suite from Vaughan Williams’ 1949 choral setting Folk Songs of the Four Seasons gives us a succession of delightful tunes.
Christmas 2012
****/*****
“The stand-out music...comes in Dark Pastoral. This is David Matthews's wonderfully skilled and imaginative, yet always-in-style completion of the slow movement of an unfinished cello concerto...Johnston's playing is searchingly beautiful and accurate; and as in the other works, Yates and the RSNO provide a quality contribution.”
January 2013
“Guy Johnston makes an impeccable soloist...Yates presides over enthusiastic, spick-and-span performances. The sound is vivid, if a touch raw”
Click on any of the works listed above for alternative recordings.
