This recording first appeared on LP in 1983 and was valuable in making available several of Vaughan Williams's rarer songs. Although the indestructible Linden Lea has achieved folk-song status, the other Barnes settings are scarcely known at all, least of all In the Spring, written in 1952, half a century after the first group and amazingly recapturing its vernal spirit and melodic grace. The two Tennyson settings belong to the romantic Vaughan Williams who also set a good deal of D. G. Rossetti at the start of the century: they are uncharacteristic, but by no means negligible.
The three Whitman songs from the 1920s are fully mature and show the freedom in setting texts which one might expect from a composer who at that date was working on four operas at the same time. They are strong, visionary settings and ideally require a richer voice than Peter Savidge possessed when this recording was made. Some strain is evident in the higher passages of Joy, Shipmate, Joy!. The four poems by the extraordinarily named Fredegond Shove, a nieceby-marriage of Vaughan Williams, are pretty dreadful poetry, it seems to me, but (as so often happens) evoked very good music. The New Ghost is deservedly recognized as one of VW's best songs, a strange mystical setting which Savidge sings with commendable variety of expression.
But the record is distinguished above all for the performance of the Four Last Songs, moving settings of poems by Ursula Vaughan Williams, of which ''Tired'' looks back to the early songs and ''Menelaus'' reminds us of the luminous qualities of the Ninth Symphony. Savidge brings real artistry to their interpretation and Roger Steptoe's accompaniments, which are a trifle rigid elsewhere, are exemplary, as is the recording balance.'