Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; Fantasia on
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CD Details
Composer: Edward ElgarComposer: Ralph Vaughan Williams
Conductor: John Barbirolli
Performer: Allegri String Quartet
Orchestra: City of London Sinfonia
Orchestra: London Sinfonia
Orchestra: Sinfon?a of London
Edition: Music CD
Format: Original recording reissued
CD Release Date: 2000-03-14
Music Label: EMI Classics
Soundtracks:
- Allegro piacevole
- Larghetto
- Allegretto
Music reviews of Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; Fantasia on
Music Review: Barbirolli invests Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasy with unique weight
Rating: 5 Stars
Though Barbirolli had a long association with Elgar (as Michael Kennedy remarks in his remarkably informative liner notes, he made no less than 6 recordings of Introduction & Allegro, including the first one in 1927 with an ensemble he had hired himself), it is for the conductor's take on Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasy (his second recording) that I bought this disc. It is, indeed, superb. The most remarkable feature of Barbirolli's conducting, I find (and this applies to many of his other recordings as well), is the weight he invests the music with. Close to the Tallis Fantasy's beginning the lower strings are instructed to play an eighth-notes bass accompaniment in pizzicati. It is marked "molto pesante". I've never heard it more pesante than with Barbirolli. It is Atlas walking with the weight of the world on his shoulders, or maybe burdened with the guilt of mankind. Other than Bernstein, I've met no version that comes close to setting such a slow initial tempo, but Berstein doesn't convey the same impression of weight. It has to do, in part, with the way Barbirolli has the balance emphasize the middle strings. But don't infer that Barbirolli plods. There is incredible power in that weight, slowly but implacably forward-moving, and this in turn has to do with the intensity with which the bows dig into the strings. And when the music becomes more animated (from 6:49, "poco piu animato", to the big climax at 10:48), Barbirolli can dramatically speed up the pace to heights of passion. In the same passage Bernstein remains rather staid. Barbirolli superbly conveys a mood of longing, alternately meditative and passionate. The notes contend that there is something religious about the Tallis Fantasy ("solemn and ecclesiastical in mood"). Maybe, but if so it is Andrei Rublev's Russian Orthodox Church with its solemn processions. This Vaughan Williams also evokes the epic and desolate northern vistas of Sibelius' symphonies - no coincidence that Barbirolli made historical recordings of these works too.
All the compositions contained on this CD save Elgar's Elegy and Sospiri came out on an LP (in the US Angel S-36010) which ever since its first publication in 1962 was justly considered a classic. As long as EMI was going to complete that program for this "Great Recordings of the Century" reissue, they might have been more generous than by adding just the two Elgar fillers, for a none too generous TT of 58'. Elgar's Elegy and Sospiri were recorded in 1966 and originally came out in the US on Angel S-36403 with the composer's Pomp and Circumstances March and Froissart-Overture.
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