Heartfelt gratitude is due, in the first place, for Along the Field. A recording was made by Nancy Evans and Leonard Hirsch, who first performed the revised version in 1954, but as far as I know it has remained unissued. This is the set of eight songs for voice and violin to poems by Housman, written originally in 1927. It has never been popular, partly because of the unusual combination, one which Vaughan Williams was probably drawn to by the example of Holst, and partly, I imagine, because the effect of that combination, together with the ironic melancholy of the poems, produces a strange, hollow sensation in the inward-parts where reside those feelings of a deeper-than-personal Angst. They are nevertheless fine songs, not obviously melodic yet strong enough to come back in memory after long years unheard.
The programme deserves its welcome in other respects too. It offers some uncommon not-quite-juvenilia (VW was 24 when he wrote Claribel, the earliest of them if the dating of 1896, given here, is correct), the settings of poems by Fredegond Shove and the deeply moving Four Last Songs to poems by his wife Ursula. Unfamiliar to me are the two old airs, German folk-song arrangements for piano and two voices, the second part being well sung by the baritone Thomas Woodman. Which brings the performances inescapably into view. Certainly the pianist plays well, and the singer sings well-in as far as singing is all that is involved. But she is curiously inexpressive; or rather, considering also her Warlock record (Koch International Classics, 10/92) about which similar points had to be made a year ago, I'm inclined to say obstinately or constitutionally inexpressive. The songs never seem 'actual' or 'present'. For instance, ''The Water Mill'' (Four Poems) tells of the miller's cat and the miller's clock but without any of the instinctive story-teller's quickening promise. One song follows another and it could almost be, to judge from the singer's expression, that the second were a mere continuation of the first. ''Goodbye'' and ''Fancy's Knell'', in Along the Field, come nearest to having a responsive life of their own, but even then surely that last line ''and to earth I'' is capable of some colouring which might suggest awareness of its significance.'