Search - Vaughan Williams, Halle Orchestra, Elder :: Wasps

VW's delightful setting of Aristophanes

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 03/10/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Lovers of V-W's music will already know the delightful, buzzy overture to The Wasps without realizing, perhaps, that the composer set much more incidental music, on invitation from Cambridge Univ. in 1909, to Aristophanes' play of the same name. Here we get every note played with elan by Mark Elder and the Halle Orch. in excellent sound. Up to this point I had tracked down only four numbers and am happy to report that the rest is engaging and witty.



The one thing that gives pause is the narration. Henry Goodman takes on several parts, but the key role is an irascible old soldier named Procleon, who in David Pountney's updated translation could have stepped out of an Eling comedy from the Fifties, cockney accent and all. The contemporary references to "Gucci suedes and Armani shades", et al. can be jarring, and Goodman rants a blue streak, but for me he was a minor irritant, more than offset by the music, which wittily quotes folk songs, Debussy, Mendelssohn, even Lehar as it romps along. Highly recommended to V-W fanciers."