Vaughan Williams's overture The Wasps is one of his best-loved works, yet the rest of the incidental music he wrote for the 1909 Cambridge University production of Aristophanes's satire has barely been heard in nearly a century. This reconstruction, made for a BBC broadcast last year, has a new, updated and highly effective translation and narration by David Pountney, with the irrepressible Henry Goodman taking on the spoken roles of Procleon and his son Anticleon (or Sandra, as he is known), the traditional protagonist and antagonist of Greek drama.
The only other role is that of the chorus, sung with G&S-like precision by a select group of tenors and basses from the Hallé Choir. Unlike so many other such resuscitations, the well-known lollipop of an overture is not the only good music. The Parabasis that ends Act 2, for example, is a large-scale piece for the chorus that reminds us that the composer was still working on his Sea Symphony at the time. The whole comic drama is performed with gusto by all concerned, and Mark Elder keeps the pace moving. The recording is immediate and effective, though the fact that Goodman was recorded separately reveals itself in the occasional difference of acoustics.