Another in the series of reissues of discs recorded
by Vernon Handley, a conductor whose career has only really emerged
from the shadows since the death in 1983 of his mentor Adrian Boult.
He is much associated with British music, in particular Elgar and, in
this case, Vaughan Williams. The familiar Tallis Fantasia gets a remarkable
performance, full of ethereal, timelessness which even Croydon’s Fairfield
Halls acoustics can re-create. So often it is a cathedral space which
seems the essential and ideal setting for this evocative music (indeed
it was the building in Gloucester which inspired the 37 year-old composer
to write it for the Three Choirs Festival of 1910). A similar melody
from the past (a 16th century folktune) provides the main
musical material for the Five Variants (1938) for strings and harp,
and it makes an ideal follow-on from the Tallis Fantasia in this marvellously
paced account by Handley, achieving a richly textured climax in the
third variation.
In 1927 the centenary of William Blake’s death was
celebrated with a ballet based on twenty-one engravings from his visionary
Illustrations of the Book of Job, condensing them down to eight
scenes thanks to the Blake scholar Geoffrey Keynes and the artist Gwen
Raverat, Vaughan Williams’ cousin. He was naturally approached to write
the music and eagerly took on the commission. Rather than following
classical ballet he favoured the 17th century term ‘masque’,
wrote the work ahead of the first production (1931) and conducted it
himself a year earlier at the Norwich Festival. It is packed full of
a variety of styles, such as folksong, hymn tunes, and Elizabethan and
Jacobean dance forms, all of which find VW in his element. It was dedicated
to Boult, and his pupil Handley has recorded it just the once, so this
reissue is most welcome for the playing is fine, the interpretation
compelling.
Christopher Fifield
See
other Handley Classics for Pleasure releases
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Vernon
Handley