Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
In 1908, with most of his major scores still unwritten, Vaughan Williams took himself to Paris to study with Ravel, two years younger but already a successful composer. Later, after they had become friends, Ravel remarked that Vaughan Williams was the only one of his pupils who had not ended up sounding like their teacher. This concert, conceived by tenor Mark Padmore, suggested he needn't have been so sure; moreover, it proved that there are moments when Ravel sounds rather like Vaughan Williams.
As Padmore and pianist Roger Vignoles alternated songs by the two composers, the connections started to appear. The opening Five Popular Greek Melodies, with its rippling, almost obsessive piano, was pure Ravel, but there was a hint of the English composer's more robust folksong treatments. Then, the bare fifths in the piano part of Ronsard � Son Ame morphed into the parallel chords that open Vaughan Williams's The Sky Above the Roof with unsuspected seamlessness. Vignoles's sonorous piano and Padmore's ringing tenor were ideally balanced, and the words came across directly.
Not all the music was vocal. Ravel's Quartet in F was given a buzzingly alive performance by the Navarra String Quartet, precisely tuned, with melodies emerging and receding into the diaphanous textures as if by sleight of hand. But the climax was the song cycle On Wenlock Edge, which finally brought all six performers together. Vaughan Williams said he wrote this in the grip of "French fever"; he was referring to the touches of vivid, impressionistic colour in the instrumental writing, but Padmore's delivery of Housman's poems had an impassioned intensity that was little short of feverish itself.
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