RaLPh Vaughan Williams: Sixth Symphony; John Ireland: Forgotten Rite

Description

World-première recordings of piano arrangements of works by Vaughan Williams (including the Sixth Symphony) and Ireland. Recorded by Alan Rowlands and Adrian Simms at Ottery St. Mary in 2009 and hailed as "historic and indispensable" by Simon Heffer.

Vaughan Williams valued the opinions of close friends on his new works, even if he did not always follow the advice given. In the early years, his first wife Adeline, fellow composers George Butterworth and Gustav Holst and many others were invited to a 'play-through' of any new work. Such first hearings were arranged for piano, or two pianos, and central to many of these performances in the 1940s and 1950s was Michael Mullinar (1895 - 1973). In July 1946 at the composer's home in Dorking, Michael Mullinar first played the Sixth Symphony – three times. He had an uncanny power of being able to suggest Ralph's orchestration and each of the many times he played the work it had been with unflagging excitement and inspiration. Because of that day, Ralph dedicated the symphony to him.

Alan Rowlands (1925-2012) was born into a musical home in Swansea and early acquired a love of English music, particularly Vaughan Williams, Delius and Ireland. But it was chemistry that won him a scholarship to Jesus College, Oxford, where he remained for seven years. He then obtained a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, where Angus Morrison introduced him to John Ireland. This led to a series of visits to Ireland's home, where he often received the benefit of the composer's advice and was selected by him to record his complete piano music for Lyrita. Alan taught at the RCM for some thirty-five years.

Adrian Sims studied piano with Alan Rowlands and Phyllis Sellick at the Royal College of Music, graduating in 1982 after winning the Chappell Gold Medal, its top piano prize. As a result, of contracting Repetitive Strain Injury, he turned to a career in psychology in 1987. He returned to the concert platform in 2005 at the Edinburgh festival and continues to perform today.

Reviews

For anyone familiar with this masterpiece, it certainly makes for absorbing listening… In sum, another bold anthology from Albion Records. --Gramophone, December 2010

… we can start to understand how that very first moment of the work's life felt. Alan Rowlands, a distinguished pianist and teacher, has edited Mullinar's own arrangement of the work for two pianos and recorded it with Adrian Sims. To my mind, it is one of the greatest recordings of the composer's works. In this raw state one hears things in the symphony that one had never heard before – in my case in hundreds, probably thousands, of previous listenings. This… is Vaughan Williams's own clear voice, his own inspiration, and a work grown not so much out of the soil of England as out of the rubble and the graves of the bloodiest war in the history of the world. And never has that been so clear as it is in this historic, and indispensable, recording. --Simon Heffer, The Daily Telegraph