Five Variants of “Dives and Lazarus”
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Recording
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Manze
- Album
- Vaughan Williams: Orchestral works
- Year
- 2019
- Length
- Period
- 20th c. & modern
- Listen
Painting
Heinrich Aldegrever
Lazarus at the Rich Man's Gate, from "The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus", 1554
The piece
Vaughan Williams wrote the Five Variants for strings and harp in 1939 for the British Council's concerts at the New York World's Fair, and Adrian Boult conducted the first performance at Carnegie Hall. The theme is the English folk tune of the ballad of Dives and Lazarus, from the parable in Luke 16, which he had earlier set as the hymn tune KINGSFOLD.
The recording
Andrew Manze recorded it with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra at The Friary, Liverpool, for Onyx, released in 2019 on an album of Vaughan Williams's orchestral music. Reviewing the album for BBC Music Magazine, Freya Parr wrote that “the music sounds as rapturously beautiful as ever.”
Other recordings
Richard Hickox's Chandos recording, paired with Five Tudor Portraits, and Bryden Thomson's with the London Philharmonic Orchestra are others to know.