Parry Prometheus Unbound*; Blest Pair of Sirens *Sarah Fox (soprano), *Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano) et al; Crouch End Festival Chorus; London Mozart Players/William Vann Chandos CHSA5317 (CD/SACD) 70:48 mins
George Bernard Shaw railed against Parry’s oratorio Job calling it ‘the most utter failure ever achieved by a thoroughly respectworthy musician’. He seems to have had more time, however, for the dramatic cantata Prometheus Unbound, the work that helped put Parry on the choral map (at any rate when Stanford conducted a Cambridge University performance the year after its Three Choirs Festival premiere in 1880). Shaw’s beef with Job was that the music was too polite to get ‘within 50,000 miles’ of the awfulness of Job’s plight. Prometheus, musically compelling as it is, doesn’t always engage with Shelley’s darker concerns – even the lushly-conceived opening tames the icy ravine where Prometheus is found tied to a precipice – but perhaps Shaw was prepared to indulge a composer finding his feet.
Whatever, it’s a piece worth exploring, especially in a premiere recording as persuasive as this. But then William Vann has form. Back in 2020, with the same choral and orchestral forces, he released an acclaimed recording of Judith, and is fast becoming the go-to conductor for rehabilitating neglected Parry. (Not just the neglected works. The coupling here is a luminously noble account of Blest Pair of Sirens).
Vann has mustered a fine team of soloists. Neal Davies is a commanding Prometheus, while David Butt Philip relishes the ringing Wagnerian Heldentenor declamation Parry allots to Jupiter. Perhaps, (despite the incisive muscularity of the orchestral playing), the chorus of the Furies is a little short on drama, but Vann’s pacing is almost unerringly adroit; and Parry’s rolling paragraphs are shaped with abiding, affectionate insight. An auspicious Promethean ‘first’.
Paul Riley