I listened to this
disc several times on journeys between
Widnes and Todmorden over the M6, M65
and Long Causeway with its roadside
wind-farms.
It's one of the three
discs this month that represent the
Lyrita gold standard in neglected British
tonal music. The other two are the Parkin
set of Ireland’s music for solo piano
and the Hurlstone double. This disc
is the most instantly and enduringly
pleasing - an easy winner.
There are firstly two
short pieces by Coleridge-Taylor. They
are sweet yet substantial - the equivalent
in style and effect
to Dvořák's Romance
for violin and orchestra or Svendsen’s
Romance or Sibelius’s Serenades.
These are bonbons which coax and calm.
After the 1897 Légende
comes the 1899 Romance. Frankly
either of these could have served as
the memorable middle movements of a
violin concerto. That was to come in
1912. If Beecham were still around either
of these pieces would send a concert-hall
audience out into the night streets
soothed and calm.
Coleridge-Taylor's
Violin Concerto has now been recorded
three times. Even though McAslan was
recorded long before the Avie and Hyperion
discs, Lyrita's long hibernation meant
that it was the last to be issued. In
summary this is the grandest and most
monumental of the three recordings.
Listen to the way she takes the theme
with such deliberation at 2:03 in the
first movement. McAslan played this
on the BBC at about the same time the
recording was made.
The premiere of the
concerto was given by Maud Powell in
1912 in the USA after the full score
and parts sank with the Titanic. This
is a concerto written in direct succession
to the Dvorak Violin Concerto and I
would say just as good … maybe better.
It's not a 'big boy' concerto like the
Elgar nor is it a shallow dazzle vehicle.
While it is not short of virtuosic demands
its emphasis is on a certain grandeur
of cantabile spirit. There are two expansive
outer movements and an almost sentimental
central andante semplice whose
moonlit violins have never been as well
caught as they are here by the LPO's
strings. Every one of the movements
has a memorable melody at its core and
breathtaking treatment and orchestration
- listen to the yawning Tchaikovskian
majesty that lifts the andante
at 3:54. Tchaikovsky enters again in
the bubbling woodwind subsidiaries of
the finale at 5:08. The finale uses
a lively melody that radiates both happiness
and intelligence - the Dvorak may well
have served as a model but I also thought
of Delius's Florida Suite as
well.
You may have heard
the Coleridge-Taylor Violin Concerto
live recently. It was played by Anthony
Marwood and the CBSO at the reopening
of Birmingham Town Hall on 8 October
2007. A rare event.
Julius Harrison's Bredon
Hill was written to order as an
expression of a cherished England in
the depths of World War 2. The studio
recording was broadcast worldwide. It
looks to two Vaughan Williams works:
The Lark Ascending and On
Wenlock Edge (Housman) of which
the song Bredon Hill is the centre
of gravity. This version of the Harrison
was recorded, like the other tracks,
in 1994 and it would have been the recording
premiere had Dutton not pipped Lyrita
to the post earlier this year with their
(almost) all-Harrison CD. It's a magical
work with echoes of the RVW Lark
and even of the Elgar Violin Concerto
– heard together recently on a fine
EMI Classics reissue from Nigel Kennedy.
George Butterworth's Rhapsody - A
Shropshire Lad is also invoked at
3:57 and elsewhere. Lorraine McAslan
plunges into the idiom with a will and
with sensitivity to the work's vital
poetry.
The Coleridge -Taylor
concerto is a real feel-good work and
deserves to travel far and wide. The
whole disc has a life-enhancing glow
about it and is an object lesson in
natural breathing digital sound.
Rob Barnett
Harrison
Bredon Hill article
Coleridge-Taylor Violin Concerto
Philippe
Graffin – Avie
Anthony
Marwood - Hyperion
for details
Lorraine McAslan (violin) 
