(1) MEDIC NEEDED FOR VAUGHAN WILLIAMS'S LARK? [Oct. 9]
(2) ONE SOLOIST, MULTIPLE VIEWS OF VW'S LARK [Oct. 10]
(3) A WHOOSH OF MEMORY OF AN EPIC CLARINET GUY [Oct. 11]
(2) VW'S LARK: ONE SOLOIST, THREE VARIED VISIONS
Neville Marriner & Iona Brown: Collaborators from the time I.B. joined the violins of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields (1964) -- in time becoming concertmaster, frequent soloist and conductor, eventually director.
by Ken
It was yet another seemingly inescapable (try though a person might!) attention-diverter, but in this case a happy one. While playing with Vaughan Williams's musical lark, I kept being drawn back to one performance, liking it more and more: Iona Brown's 1983 Proms performance with conductor Elgar Howarth. I was responding to I.B.'s strikingly personal, boldly confident, even daredevilish playing, so different (my memory was telling me) from her decade-plus-earlier recording with Neville Marriner. Indeed, on rehearing, the 1971 performance seemed coolly, carefully poised -- the word "nocturnal" occurred to me. Listening to it more, I found it more and more fascinating in its own right, all the more intriguing for the contrast with the 1983 Royal Albert Hall performance.
THEN I REALIZED I HAVE A THIRD I.B. LARK
It's with Marriner again, and I'd kind of assumed it was a recoupling of assorted older Marriner recordings (the only other Vaughan Williams on the disc is the Thomas Tallis Fantasia) and safely shelved it away as a Marriner collection. But no, it's a 1982 recording -- a year before the Prom performance! It's not the 1983 performance, but it's not the 1971 either.
Let's listen to just the opening in all three I.B. Larks, featuring the grand, finger-twisting solo-violin cadenza.
First, the 1983 performance that kept drawing me back:
Iona Brown, violin; BBC Symphony Orchestra, Elgar Howarth, cond. BBC Music Magazine, recorded live at the Proms, Royal Albert Hall, Aug. 18, 1983
Which sent me back to the easily underrated 1971 recording:
Iona Brown, violin; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. Decca, recorded in Kingsway Hall, May 11, 1971
And now the "resurrected" 1982 recording:
Iona Brown, violin; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. ASV-Vanguard, recorded in EMI Abbey Road Studio No. 1, July 5-9, 1982
The 1982 and 1983 performances also sent me back 30 years, but to a performance I hadn't known for most of that time -- it was only fairly recently that I'd been giving it much attention.
Jean Pougnet, violin; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, Oct. 21, 1952
It's worth remembering that when Jean Pougnet and Sir Adrian Boult made this recording, The Lark Ascending wasn't being played on every street corner, the way it is today. Boult was of course the conductor most closely associated with Vaughan Williams, but Pougnet didn't have a "tradition" of a zillion performances crowding in on him -- he had to make his own way, and he found a richness in the violin writing, especially (duh!) in its lower reaches, that I find especially moving -- and I hear some of that in Brown's 1982 and especially the 1983 performance.
We're not finished with The Lark either, by the way. There's a view of the piece as a last gasp of "innocent" pastoral fantasy speaking to us from the other side of the cataclysmic divide that was World War I, having been written in 1914 but not performed until 1921. This view of The Lark, as an artifact of Olden Times, is understandable but, I think, mostly wrong, and the reason why I think it's wrong is also the reason why The Lark seemed to me an excellent choice for ringing in the new year "Among others, some singing larks of the nonverbal kind are here to wish everyone: Happy New Year! (quick version)"). By way of explanation (or an attempt at explanation), I think we'll need to delve into This is sort of an example of the kind of thing that so easily diverts me from the best-laid blog plans.
The fact that it's turned into something of a tribute to Iona Brown (1941-2004) doesn't bother me at all. She was a wonderful musician, in a wonderfully non-showoffy way that sort of mirrors Neville Marriner himself, who seemed to draw a lot of musicians of that sort to the Academy of St. Martin's, including another terrific violinist who rose to the rank of director of the Academy, whom we were listening to just recently, Kenneth Sillito (in "Taking our good old time with the Gabrieli Quartet" [October 9], of which he was a cofounder and longtime first violinist). K.S., by the way, joins I.B. as the violin soloists in the Tippett Fantasia on a Theme of Corelli on that same 1982 ASV disc that includes the VW Lark Ascending and Tallis Fantasia; the fourth work on that disc is the always-welcome Elgar Serenade for Strings.)
It occurs to me that you might want to hear those three Iona Brown Lark Ascendings whole. I just happen to have audio clips at the ready.
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: The Lark Ascending, Romance
for violin and orchestra
Iona Brown, violin; BBC Symphony Orchestra, Elgar Howarth, cond. BBC Music Magazine, recorded live at the Proms, Royal Albert Hall, Aug. 18, 1983
[NOTE: I've left the applause in so we can hear the seven seconds of silence after the performance ends, about 15:02, before any further sound is heard.]
Iona Brown, violin; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. ASV-Vanguard, recorded in EMI Abbey Road Studio No. 1, July 5-9, 1982
Iona Brown, violin; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. Decca, recorded in Kingsway Hall, May 11, 1971
Jean Pougnet, violin; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, Oct. 21, 1952
NEXT UP:
(3) A WHOOSH OF MEMORY OF AN EPIC CLARINET GUY
[posts at 9am Wednesday]
WEDNESDAY 10am UPDATE: Oops, I've encountered a technical glitch I've never enountered before. In the meantime I've posted a seemingly unaffected portion of the "Part 3" post while I try to figure out what the heck is going on. -- Ken
(2) ONE SOLOIST, MULTIPLE VIEWS OF VW'S LARK [Oct. 10]
(3) A WHOOSH OF MEMORY OF AN EPIC CLARINET GUY [Oct. 11]
(2) VW'S LARK: ONE SOLOIST, THREE VARIED VISIONS
by Ken
It was yet another seemingly inescapable (try though a person might!) attention-diverter, but in this case a happy one. While playing with Vaughan Williams's musical lark, I kept being drawn back to one performance, liking it more and more: Iona Brown's 1983 Proms performance with conductor Elgar Howarth. I was responding to I.B.'s strikingly personal, boldly confident, even daredevilish playing, so different (my memory was telling me) from her decade-plus-earlier recording with Neville Marriner. Indeed, on rehearing, the 1971 performance seemed coolly, carefully poised -- the word "nocturnal" occurred to me. Listening to it more, I found it more and more fascinating in its own right, all the more intriguing for the contrast with the 1983 Royal Albert Hall performance.
The CD with the 1983 Lark (unfortunately not in general circulation)
THEN I REALIZED I HAVE A THIRD I.B. LARK
It's with Marriner again, and I'd kind of assumed it was a recoupling of assorted older Marriner recordings (the only other Vaughan Williams on the disc is the Thomas Tallis Fantasia) and safely shelved it away as a Marriner collection. But no, it's a 1982 recording -- a year before the Prom performance! It's not the 1983 performance, but it's not the 1971 either.
Let's listen to just the opening in all three I.B. Larks, featuring the grand, finger-twisting solo-violin cadenza.
First, the 1983 performance that kept drawing me back:
Iona Brown, violin; BBC Symphony Orchestra, Elgar Howarth, cond. BBC Music Magazine, recorded live at the Proms, Royal Albert Hall, Aug. 18, 1983
Which sent me back to the easily underrated 1971 recording:
Iona Brown, violin; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. Decca, recorded in Kingsway Hall, May 11, 1971
And now the "resurrected" 1982 recording:
Iona Brown, violin; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. ASV-Vanguard, recorded in EMI Abbey Road Studio No. 1, July 5-9, 1982
The 1982 and 1983 performances also sent me back 30 years, but to a performance I hadn't known for most of that time -- it was only fairly recently that I'd been giving it much attention.
Jean Pougnet, violin; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, Oct. 21, 1952
It's worth remembering that when Jean Pougnet and Sir Adrian Boult made this recording, The Lark Ascending wasn't being played on every street corner, the way it is today. Boult was of course the conductor most closely associated with Vaughan Williams, but Pougnet didn't have a "tradition" of a zillion performances crowding in on him -- he had to make his own way, and he found a richness in the violin writing, especially (duh!) in its lower reaches, that I find especially moving -- and I hear some of that in Brown's 1982 and especially the 1983 performance.
We're not finished with The Lark either, by the way. There's a view of the piece as a last gasp of "innocent" pastoral fantasy speaking to us from the other side of the cataclysmic divide that was World War I, having been written in 1914 but not performed until 1921. This view of The Lark, as an artifact of Olden Times, is understandable but, I think, mostly wrong, and the reason why I think it's wrong is also the reason why The Lark seemed to me an excellent choice for ringing in the new year "Among others, some singing larks of the nonverbal kind are here to wish everyone: Happy New Year! (quick version)"). By way of explanation (or an attempt at explanation), I think we'll need to delve into This is sort of an example of the kind of thing that so easily diverts me from the best-laid blog plans.
The Vanguard issue of the ASV CD with the 1982 Lark
The fact that it's turned into something of a tribute to Iona Brown (1941-2004) doesn't bother me at all. She was a wonderful musician, in a wonderfully non-showoffy way that sort of mirrors Neville Marriner himself, who seemed to draw a lot of musicians of that sort to the Academy of St. Martin's, including another terrific violinist who rose to the rank of director of the Academy, whom we were listening to just recently, Kenneth Sillito (in "Taking our good old time with the Gabrieli Quartet" [October 9], of which he was a cofounder and longtime first violinist). K.S., by the way, joins I.B. as the violin soloists in the Tippett Fantasia on a Theme of Corelli on that same 1982 ASV disc that includes the VW Lark Ascending and Tallis Fantasia; the fourth work on that disc is the always-welcome Elgar Serenade for Strings.)
It occurs to me that you might want to hear those three Iona Brown Lark Ascendings whole. I just happen to have audio clips at the ready.
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: The Lark Ascending, Romance
for violin and orchestra
Iona Brown, violin; BBC Symphony Orchestra, Elgar Howarth, cond. BBC Music Magazine, recorded live at the Proms, Royal Albert Hall, Aug. 18, 1983
[NOTE: I've left the applause in so we can hear the seven seconds of silence after the performance ends, about 15:02, before any further sound is heard.]
Iona Brown, violin; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. ASV-Vanguard, recorded in EMI Abbey Road Studio No. 1, July 5-9, 1982
Iona Brown, violin; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. Decca, recorded in Kingsway Hall, May 11, 1971
Jean Pougnet, violin; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, Oct. 21, 1952
NEXT UP:
(3) A WHOOSH OF MEMORY OF AN EPIC CLARINET GUY
[posts at 9am Wednesday]
WEDNESDAY 10am UPDATE: Oops, I've encountered a technical glitch I've never enountered before. In the meantime I've posted a seemingly unaffected portion of the "Part 3" post while I try to figure out what the heck is going on. -- Ken
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