It's amazing how good
these forty year old analogue tapes
sound. I am referring to the Ireland
items. The Bridge pieces are also analogue
but from analogue's Götterdämmerung
years just before DMM and digital-based
LPs began a brief ascendancy and before
the arrival of the real silvery thing.
The Ireland is given
a full-blooded performance with a gripping
sound typical of Boult's EMI recordings
of the Bliss Music for Strings and
Howells Concerto for Strings for
EMI Classics.
Concertino Pastorale
is one of Ireland's most touching
works and this version has never been
surpassed for its sumptuous and elegiac
tone. The string sound has no steel,
only silver, and an oaken attack. This
is Ireland full of vitality and perhaps
influenced by the young Tippett's Concerto
for Double String Orchestra. It
also has that resonance, vitality and
liveliness that will remind you of the
Lyrita recording of Boult's Moeran Sinfonietta.
The Holy Boy is
a mite too pressed, as if Boult was
determined to avoid any sentimentality
in this most sentimental of works.
The two movements from
the Downland Suite receive a
luminously eloquent recording. The rocking
Minuet with its redolence of
Lavender Blue is superbly pointed
and rhythmically sprung while the Elegy
flows with lilting charm. Such a
shame that Ireland did not transcribe
the other two movements of the suite.
After the fine vintage
sound of the Ireland tapes the Bridge
items are just a shade warmer and slightly
softened in focus. Rosemary is
warmly Delian and rises to a moment
of sumptuous ecstasy at 1:33 - most
surprising in a work of only 3:26.
The four movement Suite
suggests influences from Sibelius's
Rakastava and Tchaikovsky's Serenade
for Strings. The scudding Intermezzo
is a little charmer and cleanses
the palate for the Nocturne which
looks forward to There is a willow
and the slow movement of the Moeran
symphony. This strand continues in the
most harmonically complex of the pieces
here – the touching Lament was
written in memory of Catherine aged
9 drowned in the Lusitania sinking.
Sally in our Alley
is given a dry-eyed Elizabethan
curve contrasting with its companion
the fly-away Cherry Ripe which
has some of the wildness unleashed of
Song of My Heart. Any remaining
cobwebs are blasted away by the delightfully
intriguing and skirling cross-currents
of Sir Roger de Coverley.
The fine notes drawn
from the original LPs are by Harold
Rutland and John Bishop.
This closes the Ireland
orchestral shelf in the Lyrita lumber
room. Soon we will have 3CD boxed sets
of the Chamber Music and the Songs and
solo Piano Music. There's yet more Bridge
to come including a coupling of Phantasm
and Oration.
Rob Barnett
Also Available
SRCD.220
Boult conducts Parry
SRCD.222
Boult conducts Holst
SRCD.231
Boult conducts Bax
SRCD.241
Boult conducts Ireland
Lyrita
Catalogue
for details
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Sir Adrian
Boult 
