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CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
May 27, 2005
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By Anna Carol Dudley
Old First Concerts in San Francisco is presenting a chamber music series called "Basically British," and Friday night's concert, all British, was an excellent beginning. The program featured settings by George Butterworth and Ralph Vaughan Williams of poetry by English poet A.E. Housman, as well as pieces by Edward Elgar and Benjamin Britten.
Tenor Thomas Glenn began engagingly with “Loveliest of trees,” a sweet, lyrical setting of an enchanting poem and the first in Butterworth's six-song cycle, A Shropshire Lad. These songs were grouped so that they were increasingly darker. By the time Glenn got to "The lads in their hundreds," he was singing directly to our times: "And there with the rest are the lads that will never be old." Butterworth himself died young, in World War I, and it is sad to think of his having set some of these poems. The last song of the group, "Is my team ploughing?," is a dialog between a dead soldier and the friend he left behind. The dead man asks whether his team of horses are still working, whether the lads are still playing football, whether his girl has stopped weeping. Glenn sang the part of the dead soldier softly and very beautifully. The voice of the living friend, answering in the affirmative, was in Glenn's interpretation too loud and strident, more than seemed appropriate. Even at the end, when it becomes clear that the living friend has taken up with the dead man's sweetheart, Housman's poem and Butterworth's setting seem to call for a warmer, more compassionate sound.
On Wenlock Edge, Vaughan Williams' extraordinary setting of poems by Housman for tenor, piano and string quartet, begins with the stormy title song, evoking strong winds and the transience of human existence. The six songs, of varying length, are imaginatively orchestrated — sometimes accompanied by the whole ensemble, sometimes with piano only, sometimes with the upper strings alone, all to wonderful effect. "Is my team ploughing?" reappeared in Vaughan Williams' setting, with string introduction and epilogue, the strings helping to define the two voices. The last two songs are on themes of dying — "Bredon Hill," sung by an inconsolable lover, and "Clun," in which death is contemplated as a final welcome relief. Glenn performed the Vaughan Williams with distinction, as did the players, violinists Joe Edelberg and Laura Albers, violist Elizabeth Prior Runnicles, cellist Thalia Moore and pianist John Parr.
Benjamin Britten wrote his Lachrymae for viola and piano on themes from two lute songs by the great Elizabethan composer, John Dowland. Glenn introduced the Britten piece by singing the Dowland songs, "If my complaints" and "Flow my tears." Prior Runnicles was the violist, playing the Britten with expressive feeling and gorgeous sound. John Parr, the evening's pianist, took a solo turn with Edward Elgar's Concerto Allegro for piano. Parr was also responsible for the elegant arrangement of the program, moving from Butterworth to Britten to Elgar to Vaughan Williams. Unfortunately, he likes to talk, and his spoken program notes, mostly repetitive of his written notes, actually had the effect of impeding the flow of the program. At most, one sentence calling attention to Dowland's songs and Britten's use of them three centuries later would have sufficed for listeners unfamiliar with Dowland. Parr the speaker was a sort of gossip columnist. Parr the pianist, on the other had, was a commanding personality, communicating expressively to his audience. His playing of the Elgar was stylish, technically secure, by turns lyrical and florid, songlike and all over the keyboard. And his work as an accompanist and chamber musician was tasteful and supportive throughout.
(Anna Carol Dudley is a singer, teacher, member of the faculties of the
University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco State University lecturer emerita] and director emerita of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Baroque Music Workshop.)
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Thomas Glenn
John Parr
