Customer Reviews

Vaughan Williams: Five Tudor Portraits; Five Mystical Songs

5 star:		(1)
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At last Hyperion records (U.K.) have released a cd reissue on their current Helios sublabel of the Vaughan Williams' Five Mystical Songs and Tudor Portraits. Wetton (a surprisingly competent conductor for these days) and his huge orchestra are backed by wonderful choral parts (glimpses of what Heaven could be?); the soloist vocal parts are superb, thanks to Sarah Walker and Henry Herford's - two of England's greatest voices. The recording is quite good (don't expect the best from Telarc or Mercury, but it ain't bad either, especially in the way dynamics of the percussion and massive vocals are right there - rightly!). Certainly, a Vaughan Williams disc that is worth investigating. To me, these works represent sort of an 'overview' of the whole V.W.s' works. A plus, the Helios Series from Hyperion are amazingly inexpensive - considering the actual cost of a majority of CDs. Other great recordings of these works include the reference version by Sir David Willcocks, yet this one isn't far behind. We aren't far from Heaven, too.

I've always had an attraction to classical music, however, I've always been so overwelmed by the vast variety of classical music out there, I've really never known where to start. I decided to finally purchase a CD of various pieces to start with, and started previewing albums on top of albums. After finally coming across this CD, I have to say it does have a nice collection (of what I could hear). Not too harsh, not too drowsy. I gave this CD 4 out of 5 stars because it doesn't feature as many of the true classic composers as I wanted, but I would recommend this CD for anyone who wants to buy a first Classical Cd.