Toward the Sun Rising:

Ralph Vaughan Williams Remembered Ed. Stephen Connock

Albion Music Ltd ISBN 978-0-99562843-4 394pp (hb) £30.00

In the mid-1990s Stephen Connock, chairman of the Ralph Vaughan William Society, had the idea of recording memories from all those still alive who had known the great composer. Some 67 people were videoed and/or recorded talking about the man they knew and clearly loved: from these multifarious and sometimes contradictory voices emerges a substantial figure over six feet tall, stooped, straightforward, open-hearted and approachable. The bias, inevitably, is towards memories of him towards the end of his life, under the cheering influence of his second wife Ursula. This is balanced to an extent by coupling these new interviews with past articles and interviews, some appearing in print for the first time, of close friends, relations and colleagues. Vaughan Williams was notorious for avoiding discussion about his own work, and anyone hoping to find insights into his music here will mostly be disappointed, though to an extent it reflects its amiable and soft-spoken creator who only occasionally exploded with rage. Altogether, a charming and richly detailed introduction to the composer and his circle. Daniel Jaffé ★★★★