Portraits of a Mind Vaughan Williams: On Wenlock Edge; Four Hymns (arr. Farrington); Ian Venables: Portraits of a Mind Alessandro Fisher (tenor), William Vann (piano); The Navarra Quartet Albion ALBCD 057 59:03 mins
Ian Venables’s Portraits of a Mind (for tenor, piano and string quartet) was commissioned by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society for the sesquicentenary of the composer’s birth in 2022, and this is its first recording. The same performers who gave the premiere at the Oxford Lieder Festival are featured, and play the piece with practiced authority. The cycle’s five songs are exceptionally well sung by Alessandro Fisher, who convincingly encompasses emotions stretching from the balmy pastoralism of the opening ‘The Lark Ascending’ (with chirruping near-quotations from VW), to the pained retrospection of the Rossetti setting ‘Echo’.
The incisive playing of the Navarra Quartet comes vividly to the fore in Vaughan Williams’s own On Wenlock Edge. The players’ constant swirl of energy in the opening song, combined with fluttering tremolandos, exactly catch the sense of disquieted alarm VW intended. Fisher is again excellent, especially in a wrenching performance of ‘Is my team ploughing?’, the equal of any on record.
Iain Farrington’s arrangement of Four Hymns for the same voice-piano-quartet formation rounds out the recital, and will interest VW completists. But it’s Fisher’s On Wenlock Edge which is the true jewel of this particular collection.
Terry Blain