Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music has been another piece on my wishlist. A while back there was a proposal to perform it in Bath with me and 15 other singers, but it didn’t happen. It can be done also with a choir and four soloists, but Bristol Choral Society did it in Bristol Cathedral in the fully choral version; there’s no change in the score, so one minute you are doing a rather undemanding part for massed voices and the next you are pretending to be Eva Turner or Isobel Baillie. We used a reduced orchestration for strings and piano. I shall understand this piece better next time I hear it in a concert.
The other Vaughan Williams in the concert was Dona Nobis Pacem, written slightly earlier, which is getting a lot of performances in the WWI centenary period, including the one I sang at 3 Choirs a couple of years ago. This too was given in an arrangement for strings and piano, so you had to imagine the brass in the second movement. On the other hand this performance had more expressive flexibility with regard to tempo. I suspect this piece will withdraw from concert programmes again once the centenary is past, but perhaps it might be time to look at RVW’s other cantatas, Sancta Civitas and Hodie – both are just names to me.
Our programme was completed with Howells’ Elegy and Farewell to Arms by Finzi. This last is not exactly a song cycle, just two thematically related poems set for tenor and strings. I thought I knew Finzi’s music quite well, but I was unaware of it. It was an inspired complement to the other pieces.