ASV are promoting once
again this staple of the repertoire
which has seen fine service, on and
off, over a twenty year period. Part
of the reason may be in the nature of
an obituary, because it enshrines the
late Iona Brown’s first recording of
The Lark Ascending, a thoroughly
beautiful and idiomatic piece of fiddling
and much preferable to her early 1990s
remake. Most big name soloists fail
to suppress their outsize personalities
sufficiently in this work and it’s left
to leaders and occasional soloists such
as Pougnet, Bean and Brown (from these
shores at least) to get to its heart.
I’ve heard enough vibrato-laced dramas
to last a lifetime (Zuckerman, Tognetti
or Kennedy’s Great Bustard of a lark
which barely gets airborne) but Brown
knows how this work goes and but for
the rather too forward clarinet and
horn solos this would be a pretty fine
piece of analogue recording as well.
Otherwise her purity of tone and simplicity
and directness are entirely winning.
Collectors will have Bean, the more
historically minded the other Boult
accompanied traversal with Jean Pougnet;
antiquarians will push for the first
ever re-release of the 1927 Isolde Menges
recording, with Sargent conducting.
If we can’t have the dedicatee Marie
Hall on disc let’s have Menges.
Unlike the Lark I have
a soft spot for Marriner’s later recording
of the Tallis Fantasia. This one lacks
a certain mystery but against that I
must say it’s a recording that lays
out the harmonic implications and the
spatial balances with real acumen. There’s
an unusual clarity to the recording
that allows one to hear unexpected harmonic
twists – and no less, the quartet’s
role. Here Brown is again prominent
as well as Shingles’ astute viola and
Vigay’s exemplary cello playing. Elgar’s
Serenade is sprucely played – with fine
phrasing in the Larghetto, its lower
voices established with care. In the
Tippett Iona Brown is joined by Kenneth
Sillito to form a formidable two-violin
team. There’s great tonal richness and
a sense of sweep in this performance
and a sense of exultation as well.
An outright recommendation
will depend on your priorities but the
playing itself is of a notably high
standard and those yet to be entranced
by Brown’s Lark now have a renewed chance
to become acquainted.
Jonathan Woolf
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Academy of St Martin-in-the Fields/Neville Marriner