How's the CD booklet, Maeve? I'm listening to the album now on Spotify and I really like it. What can you see in the CD booklet and in the songbook about the participation of Ursula Vaughan Williams in all this?
Here's the text from the Musicweb page on the CD:
Engel Lund was a singer, born in Reykjavik in 1902. She sang all over Europe and the United States before returning to Iceland for her final years and died a month before her 96th birthday. Her particular interest was in folk song. Helped by her accompanist Ferdinand Reuter she produced a book of folk songs in the 1930s, partly to show their belief in the power of music as a beneficial influence bringing people together. The present recording is said to be its first complete recording.
Nowadays, except where the arrangements are by composers with a reputation in the wider musical world, such as Britten, Grainger or Brahms, there is some suspicion of the results when singers with "trained" voices sing folk songs, especially if the accompanying instrument is the piano. This is understandable, and it is true that the actual sound of these songs is likely to bear little resemblance to that of the "folk" from whom many of these songs were collected. But to deny ourselves the pleasure of hearing them would be foolish. Their existence does not threaten the existence of the original songs, and they are presented with such skill and sensitivity that almost all of the songs have a distinctive and interesting flavour of their own. I would not want to exaggerate their musical value, but in general Rauter's accompaniments are very carefully devised to demonstrate the individual character of each song without drawing too much attention away from the singer.
I suspect that any performance of some of these songs would be enjoyable, but Lieder Theatre London have hit on the ingenious idea of splitting them between no less than fourteen singers.All appear from the photographs and their singing to be young, and for the most part they sing songs in their own languages. The final song - the only one from England – is the exception being sung by a group of singers, only one of whom appears to have English as their first language. There are songs in the various Scandinavian languages, in Yiddish, German, French and so on. The varied sounds of the languages, especially when they are as well articulated as they are here, are a major feature here, and their wonderful mixture of flavours gives great delight in itself in these generally fresh and well projected performances. The pianists are all excellent, doing all they can to provide variety within the generally simple strophic accompaniments.
I have been unable to locate a copy of the original book, so that I am unclear as to whether the order on these discs has been altered. The recording results from a concert version first performed at the Austrian Embassy in London, and certainly even given the involvement of so many singers and pianists the sequence is clearly devised to be a coherent as a whole. I had no difficulty in listening to the two discs in succession with no sense of monotony. Various themes emerge gradually, including love, animals and death, but these are not hammered home. Instead there is a growing feeling of common concerns being raised in different ways but of a common underlying humanity. The opening sequence of Scandinavian songs demonstrates this best. The languages and cut of the tunes is clearly different and yet in a way these very differences demonstrate what they have in common. I suspect that the implicit messages these discs give to anyone listening to them with care are worth any amount of formal "diversity training". Perhaps they should be made compulsory listening in schools and, even more, by politicians.
The original texts are printed in the booklet, together with brief notes on each song and what are clearly singing translations – often very ingenious and not too far from the originals of those languages that I could follow. There are also photographs of most of the artists and of Engel Lund and Ferdinand Rauter. Curiously no timings are given of individual songs and no indication of where or when they were recorded. The total length of the two discs is little more than could have been put onto one, and many potential purchasers may wish that either a couple of songs had been omitted to do that, or that additional material had been added. One obvious candidate would have been examples of Engle Lund's own singing of these songs, recordings of which presumably do exist. I would not want to make too much of these points, however What matters is the sheer enjoyment that these discs give and the pleasure in a diversity of language which only partly conceals a common underlying humanity. A perfect present at any time of year.
John Sheppard
So, Maeve, does the CD have all of the songs that are in your copy of the book?
-Joe-