I was quite unaware of this excellent introduction
to Percy Grainger until I received with the Chandos monthly
e-Newsletter a free download of the companion
Introduction
to Vaughan Williams, the booklet for which advertises
this recording. Contrary to the popular belief that there
is no such thing as a free lunch, Chandos’s generosity
in offering the VW download free, in this VW year, comes
very close to it. If, as I hope, they are rewarded by increased
sales of this companion recording – available as a CD and
download from Chandos’s theclassicalshop.net – they will
have been justly rewarded.
The Grainger CD in turn advertises the
Introduction
to Elgar. None
of these introductory CDs under-rates the potential listener
by offering bleeding chunks though, of necessity, the
Grainger consists mainly of short works. If you are just
looking for the old favourites – only the final track,
English
Dance, is perhaps less than well known – very well
performed and recorded, you need look no further.
The guiding hand of Richard Hickox and
his fellow conductors more or less guarantees high quality
and that is what we get. The cheerfulness is never overdone
and the
Irish Tune from County Derry (popularly
known as the
Londonderry Air) receives an affecting
but not over-sentimental performance. This is far removed
from the overdone renditions by the likes of Josef Locke
that my father and grandfather revelled in.
The recordings are in Chandos’s best manner:
bright but not over-bright. Despite having been made on
several different occasions - and in several locations?
- there is never any sense of having to adjust aurally
between tracks.
Most of the parent CDs appeared before
Musicweb was fully up and running, but one of our earliest
reviews awarded CHAN9721 and CHAN9730 full marks – see
review by
IL.
It is to be hoped that purchasers will
be inspired by this introduction to experiment further
with Chandos’s excellent range of Percy Grainger recordings.
There are only three vocal items here, but they are just
enough to remind us that not all of his output was orchestral:
the Chandos catalogue contains both vocal, chamber, instrumental
solo and orchestral pieces. I’m just a little surprised
that the booklet did not contain details of their catalogue
numbers – that might have been more useful than the ad
for the Elgar compilation. It might have seemed mercenary
to advertise the other Grainger CDs, but it would have
saved chasing them up on the Chandos website.
Most of the Grainger here is fun music – this
is, after all, the work of the composer seen leaping around
fey-like in the classic Ken Russell Delius film – but there
is a serious side, too. Listen to his arrangement of
Early
one morning for the other side of the coin. Even the
jolly music is well crafted – clearly, Grainger spent at
least some of his time in more serious pursuits. You’ll
see from the dates in the headings how often and over how
long a period Grainger reworked his music – further details
in the Chandos booklet. There is a strong case for placing
his arrangements of British folk song on a par with those
of Delius – and who else could have taken a tune from Handel’s
Harmonious
Blacksmith and turned it into that jazzy and un-Handel-like
piece
Handel in the Strand? It takes the likeable
cheek of a Mr Toad to do that.
The wind-band writing in the
Lincolnshire
Posy suite is fully the equal of Holst’s and Vaughan
Williams’ and the performance by the Royal Northern College
Wind Orchestra every bit as good as that on my favourite
recording of the Holst and V-W (London Wind Orchestra/Denis
Wick at budget price on ASV Resonance CDRSN3006).
For low-price introductions, the presentation
of these CDs has not been skimped, apart from the lack
of detail about where and exactly when the recordings were
made. Both the Grainger and VW booklets contain helpful
information – I hadn’t realised the full story behind the
several versions of
Country Gardens, for example – with
catalogue numbers from the British Folk Music Society,
etc., for Grainger and within attractive covers. Is the
bicycle on the cover of the Grainger not a little too modern,
though, with its plastic reflectors?
At this price, the only serious rival is
Chandos’s own even cheaper but shorter 1978 collection
from the Bournemouth Sinfonietta and Kenneth Montgomery
on CHAN6542 (CD and mp3).
The Vaughan Williams CD (see
review) is, if anything, even
more enticing than the Grainger, containing as it does
The Wasps
Overture,
the Greensleeves Fantasia, The Lark Ascending, that favourite
of Classic FM listeners, and the Second Symphony, all in
more than decent performances. I was particularly pleased
to see Bryden Thomson’s version of the symphony reappear
in this form; it may not be quite the equal of the Barbirolli
version from which I first got to know the work on a Pye
Golden Guinea LP or Chandos’s own Richard Hickox
performance of the original version, but it is well worth
hearing. I might have preferred the Tallis Fantasia to
one of the shorter pieces – as a lover of Tallis,
I’m fascinated by the perfect blending of the 16th
and 20th centuries in this work – but I’m sure
the Second was the right VW symphony to introduce to the
beginner and the Thomson recording is one of the best from
a variable series (CHAN2028).
The Elgar also offers full-length performances: Pomp
and Circumstance No.1, the Cello Concerto (Ralph Kirshbaum),
Chanson de Matin and the Enigma Variations, all but the
Chanson conducted by Alexander Gibson. Again, these may
not be quite out of the top drawer, though many will
find the Cello Concerto more to their liking than the
very deeply emotive du Pré/Barbirolli classic
account – my wife, for one, who finds that du Pré moves
her too deeply to bear (CHAN2021).
Brian
Wilson