This Helios reissue was first released on Hyperion CDA67279
nearly a decade ago. It remains a fine disc, and enshrines some
of Grainger’s major, and a few minor, transcriptions. They’re
all played with an engaging sense of vitality and, where appropriate,
chiselled rhythmic sense. Piers Lane never dawdles, and invariably
invigorates.
The disc opens with a litmus test of Grainger performance, the
Air and variations by Byrd, better known as The Carman’s
Whistle and played with warm lyricism and beautifully balanced
appreciation of the dictates of the tune. It’s often taken slower,
indeed Martin Jones in his Nimbus boxed set of Grainger’s solo
piano works takes it considerably slower. Both approaches work,
but arguably a tighter tempo grip is the more appropriate. The
programme is by no means slavishly chronological – the chronology
referring to the composers whose works are transcribed, not
that of the date Grainger reclothed them – but it is very broadly
so. Therefore Byrd is followed by Dowland and Handel, in proper
chronology, but then by Cyril Scott and Stanford which isn’t.
This matters not at all. The Scott, in fact, offers a rare chance
to hear a transcription that is overlooked, the Handelian
Rhapsody. It’s quite an expressive piece, full of brio and
chordal panache; of Handel there is little sign, nor of Scott
too, really, for that matter.
Grainger’s transcription of Stanford’s Four Irish Dances
is, by contrast, very well known. Lane takes sensible tempi
and characterises finely. Jones is a touch faster but no more
communicative. The ‘Ramble on Love’ is from Rosenkavalier,
one of his most famous such transcriptions. Where Jones luxuriates
in its aching beauty, Lane presses a bit onwards, reining in
the languor and bittersweet harmonies. In his 78 in 1929 Grainger
drove through it in just over six minutes, though possibly it
was to fit two sides of the disc. Of the two Fauré settings,
I’ve always much preferred Nell to Après un rêve
because the former sounds so much more idiomatic. The Paraphrase
on Tchaikovsky's Flower Waltz is powerfully engaging in
Lane’s hands. When the composer set down his version in 1918
– two takes have survived – he had to hustle through it, brilliantly
though he did it. Rightly the disc ends with the treble burnish
of Stephen Foster via Grainger’s tribute to him – music of affection
and once more considerable warmth.
Lane’s excellent, acutely perceptive recording emerges quite
as recommendable as in its first incarnation.
Jonathan Woolf
Piers Lane (piano)
