Vaughan Williams: The Pilgrim's Progress / Hickox, et al

Vaughan Williams: The Pilgrim's Progress / Hickox, al - Chandos Records - CHA 9

Label: Chandos Records
Catalog No: CHA 9625
Format: CD
Release Date: 1998-05-19
Number of Discs: 2
Running time: 2 hr. 11 min.
UPC Code: 095115962527

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Notes & Reviews:

This premiere digital studio recording of Vaughan Williams's powerful and moving epic follows a highly successful performance at the Barbican Hall, London, in November, 1997.

Gramophone Classical Music Guide
John Noble was a fine Pilgrim on the old Boult recording, but Gerald Finley brings not only a voice that's as good and well suited but also a dramatic quality that is more colourful and intense. But Boult's cast is very strong, with several of the short parts, such as the Herald (Terence Sharpe) better sung than as here (Robert Hayward).

In the Valley of Humiliation the voice of Apollyon comes as an amplified sound from off-stage, but on record the trick is to catch an overpowering terror, and this they managed better on EMI, partly by virtue of having Robert Lloyd to strike it, and also by the producer's decision to bring it closer. Nor, in the comparison, is there any sense of a confrontation of 'bright young feller' and 'grand old fuddyduddy'.

Boult doesn't sound like an old man, any more than Hickox sounds like a youngster.

Hickox has a big canvas for the recorded sound, and achieves a clearer texture from EMI.

The newer version also has Gerald Finley, and is a fine performance anyway.



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Works Details

>Vaughan Williams, Ralph : The Pilgrim's Progress
  • Performers: Susan Gritton (Soprano); Adrian Thompson (Tenor); Anne-Marie Owens (Mezzo-soprano); Donaldson Bell (Baritone); Richard Coxon (Tenor); Christopher Keyte (Bass Baritone); Pamela Stephen (Mezzo Soprano); Roderick Williams (Bass Baritone); Peter Coleman-Wright (Bass); Jeremy White (Bass); Robert Hayward (Bass); Gidon Saks (Bass Baritone); Mark Padmore; Rebecca Evans (Soprano); Jonathan Fisher (Baritone); Francis Egerton (Tenor); Gerald Finley
  • Conductor: Richard Hickox
  • Ensemble: Royal Opera House Covent Garden Orchestra
  • Notes: The Colosseum, Watford, London, England (11/05/1997-11/09/1997)
  • Running Time: 3 min. 43 sec.
  • Period Time: Post Romantic
  • Form: Opera/Operetta
  • Written: 1949