Mentor And Muse: Songs By Vaughan Williams And The Women Around Him

Ralph Vaughan Williams The Sky Above the Roof;Four poems by Fredegond Shove; Elizabeth Maconchy In Fountain Court; Impetuous Heart, Be Still; The Woodspurge; The Exequy; Come Away, Death; King Stephen; Ophelia’s Song; Grace Williams Billows of the Sea Rosabelle; Sweet and Low; The Lowlands of Holland; Black-Eyed Susan; The Lament of the Border Widow
Ralph Vaughan Williams Four Last Songs: Procris; Tired; Hands, Eyes and Heart; Menelaus.

Kitty Whately (mezzo-soprano), William Vann (piano)

Albion Records ALBCD069
https://www.rvwsociety.com/albion-records/

For any lover of English song this is a disc to cherish. At its heart lie the songs of Elizabeth Maconchy and Grace Williams, heard alongside the man who taught them both, Ralph Vaughan Williams. Mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately and pianist William Vann have performed together for several years, and they kept returning to Vaughan Williams's orbit. Above all, they were drawn to the women who wrote the music and verse he knew so well. What emerges is a picture of a teacher, his pupils and his friends, each with a voice entirely their own.

The poets are close to home. Fredegond Shove was a niece of Adeline Fisher, Vaughan Williams's first wife, and as a girl she was a bridesmaid at their wedding in 1897. Ursula Vaughan Williams, who became his second wife in 1953, had published some of her early verse as Ursula Wood. Mabel Dearmer was the wife of his friend and collaborator, the Rev. Percy Dearmer.

The disc has nine Vaughan Williams songs. The Four Poems by Fredegond Shove (1925) include the much-loved The Water Mill, and they are a particular highlight. Whately's colour and control are delightful, and the duo have such a light touch that they seem to caress both words and music. The Four Last Songs, setting Ursula's poems, are captivating, and Whately sings them with a sensual sensitivity that draws you into each one. The Sky Above the Roof completes the group. It sets Mabel Dearmer's English version of a Verlaine poem and was written for her.

Vaughan Williams watched Maconchy's progress with keen interest, and she is represented by seven songs. The first dates from her seventeenth year and already hints at what was to come.

The major discovery is Billows of the Sea, a cycle of four songs by the Welsh composer Grace Williams, heard here in its first recording. The Guild for the Promotion of Welsh Music commissioned it in 1969, and it was published only recently. Williams never lost touch with her old teacher, and she and Maconchy became firm friends. Their letters to one another have since been published and are well worth seeking out. Curiously for a Welsh commission, the texts of the cycle, and of the one further Williams song here, look north of the border rather than to Wales. The pair are especially absorbing in Walter Scott's The Lament of the Border Woman. The sea runs powerfully through this music, and Whately and Vann let it swell and break with real command.

Throughout, Whately shapes and phrases each song beautifully and brings out its character with confidence. A former BBC New Generation Artist and Kathleen Ferrier Award winner, she has championed neglected women composers from the Romantic era onwards, from Rebecca Clarke to Madeleine Dring. Vann has done the same for lost British songs and choral works, and his accompaniments here are exquisite.

The recording was made at St George's, Headstone, in July and October 2025, produced by Andrew Walton and engineered by Tim Burton of K&A Productions. As always from Albion Records, the booklet is full of interesting material and photographs.

This is a lovely theme to build a programme around. It shows Vaughan Williams not as a lone monument but as the centre of a circle of friends, and it is another excellent release from Albion.