Green shadows: The Music of Richard Pantcheff

It was as a young chorister at Ripon Cathedral that Richard Pantcheff first became fascinated by, and immersed himself into, the musical world of Ralph Vaughan Williams. The music seemed so evocative, deeply-rooted, and expressing something beyond the here-and-now: it was not hard to see how this captivated a young and active musical mind.

Many of Vaughan Williams’ motivations and interests proved to be themes that Richard Pantcheff learnt, and sang, about in his early days. This journey of discovery continued, and he then went on to explore these themes in his own compositions: the music of the English Church; the rich and deep tradition of British folk songs; the encapsulation of landscape and history into music; and works of very specifically English literature (such as Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress). And, of course, the feeling, ever-present in Vaughan Williams’ music, that despite (human) nature containing so much beauty, there is an omnipresent darker side; something that Nikolaus Harnoncourt summed up thus: ‘Beauty in music is found on the edge of catastrophe’.

This CD draws together many of these threads from Richard Pantcheff’s compositions. The style and musical language are distinctly his own (and in many places thus far-removed from Vaughan Williams’ own sound-world), but often the impetus for the works comes from areas deeply rooted in Vaughan Williams’ world, reflecting common interests.

Thus, there are parallels: works extensively using English folk tunes; a setting of the Holy Communion; a ‘concerto’ for violin and strings; a solo Oboe work which extends the journey of the Pilgrim to his final resting place; and a Coronation motet.

The CD opens with the concert piece for String Orchestra and Piano, Green Shadows Fall. This work was written in 2022 in response to a commission from the Intelligence Corps of the British Army, for a memorial-style piece suitable for solemn occasions. The two major themes of the work were sketched many years before, and had lain unused in the composer’s archive for some time. The composer deliberately intended that the work could be performed by many different ensembles, according to need. These include Piano Quintet; Organ Solo; and Solo Pianoforte. It was first performed in the version for Military Band, at Chicksands, Bedfordshire, on 15th July 2023, at the Annual Intelligence Corps Day, at which HRH The Princess Royal was the guest of honour.

The short motet, A Prayer for the King’s Majesty, was written at the time of the accession of His Majesty King Charles III to the throne. It is a setting of a well-known Church of England collect (‘O Lord, grant the king a long life’) and was designed to be used by choirs celebrating the King’s coronation. Its long melismatic lines are intended to mirror the text’s pleas for longevity in the life of the monarch. The work was first performed by the London Choral Sinfonia, conducted by Michael Waldron, as part of this recording.

On Hearing the Oxford Bells at Eventide (Opus 57) is a substantial work for Narrator, String Orchestra, and Piano. It was premiered in its original (full orchestral) version on 28th September 2002, at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, by the Oxford Orchestra da Camera under Howard Williams. Henry Kelly was the Narrator. Two poems (Oxford Revisited and At Oxford) by the English poet William Bowes (1762-1850) comprise the narrated text, which forms an integral part of the orchestral fabric. The mood is one of a deep memorial tribute to Oxford. There is much here that speaks of the city and the university itself, the poet’s experiences of it (presumably as a young undergraduate), as well as fond reflections upon the poet’s life after his time in Oxford. The musical structure is a free-form, single-movement concert piece, in which the voices of the piano and narrator are seamlessly interwoven with the string orchestra.

The Fantasia on Yorkshire Folk Tunes for solo Violin and solo Violoncello (Opus 102) is a work that pulls together a number of otherwise disparate threads in the composer’s life. By the time Richard Pantcheff set to work on this piece (in Johannesburg in June 2018) he had already written a number of works for one or two solo instruments (e.g. the three works entitled Introduction and Allegro, and six works under the generic title of Nocturnus). Assembling the folk tunes to be used in this new work enabled him to reach back into his time at Ripon, and also to connect the musical language to the amazing landscapes of rural Yorkshire.

The work is sectional but continuous in form, with each instrument taking the lead at various stages, and with some memorable moments where they come together as equals, making, as it were, a third voice from their combination. The folk tunes used are all authentic, although they are certainly subject to alteration (tonally and rhythmically). The underlying message of a number of the tunes is in turn (inter alia) pastoral, brooding, or melancholy. The work was commissioned by the English Music Festival in Yorkshire, and was premiered at Castle Bolton by Rupert Marshall-Luck (Violin) and Joseph Spooner (Violoncello) in October 2018.

Of all the works presented here, the Service of Holy Communion (Opus 92) is the only one which has a specific link to Ralph Vaughan Williams, being written, as it was, for the St. George’s Chamber Choir (of Johannesburg, South Africa) to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of Vaughan Williams’ death. The work follows the traditional pattern of the service of Holy Communion in the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer (i.e. with the Gloria as the final movement). The style here is modal and homophonic, relying almost entirely on significant harmonic shifts to provide the work with its considerable momentum. The work can be performed with Chamber Organ accompaniment, or, as here, unaccompanied.

For this recording, the composer agreed to include a setting of The Lord’s Prayer, which was not part of the original work, but rather is taken from a set of Preces and Responses he wrote at the same time for the choir of St. Cyprian’s Cathedral, Kimberley, South Africa. It is included on the grounds of stylistic similarity with the Service of Holy Communion. The work was premiered by the St George’s Chamber Choir, in St. George’s Church, Johannesburg, on 1st December 2018, under the direction of the composer.

Following on from the successful arrangement of ‘...the space immense of the azure sky...’ for Oboe and Piano (originally written for Recorder and Piano), Richard Pantcheff decided to compose a work for solo Oboe for inclusion on this disc. The three-movement Pilgrim’s Rest is designed to be an afterword to Vaughan Williams’ Pilgrim’s Progress, and in particular two works derived therefrom which Richard Pantcheff had sung as a youngster: the motet Valiant for Truth, and the Pastoral Episode The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains. Here the voice of the Oboe is one of nostalgia, thanksgiving, loss, and celebration. Pilgrim’s Rest is numbered 2024/No.7 in the composer’s catalogue, and the first performance of the work took place in the recording of this disc.

The idea for the concert piece Echoes of Lonely Waters came from Richard Pantcheff hearing for the first time the orchestral piece Lonely Waters by E.J. Moeran, a work written in 1931 dedicated to Vaughan Williams. The score of the Moeran work includes two possible endings, one of which is purely orchestral, and the other which requires a folk-singer to sing a folk song: ‘So I will go down to some lonely waters / Go down where no one shall find me, / Where the pretty little small birds do change their voices, / And every moment blow blustering wild.’

These ideas of bucolic beauty, loneliness, and birdsong are ones which also permeate the new piece. Once again, inherent in the work are the same contrasting elements found in the Fantasia on Yorkshire Folk Tunes and On Hearing the Oxford Bells at Eventide: the simultaneous presence of great beauty, tranquillity, and fond memory and yet a realization that underlying them there is sometimes turbulence, transience, and melancholy. Echoes of Lonely Waters received its first performance by the London Choral Sinfonia as part of the recording of this CD.

The version of the Spring Suite recorded here (subtitled ‘Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra’) is the arrangement made by the composer of his work for Recorder and Piano. Rather than being in standard concerto form, the work uses traditional dance movements across its short five-movement span. The emphasis here is on bringing out the rhythmic drive of the original dances, but in a contemporary harmonic idiom, allowing the solo violin to take on all manner of different moods and attitudes: playful; sad; vibrant; contemplative; etc.

The Spring Suite was commissioned in its original form by John Turner, the world-famous recorder player. Richard Pantcheff started work on the score in July 2022 (it appears in his catalogue as 2022/No.2). It was premiered in the version for Recorder and String Quartet, by John Turner (Recorders) and the Victoria String Quartet at St. Paul’s Church, Heaton Moor, Stockport, on 21st June 2023.

© 2026 James Hobson