Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music; The Lark Ascending; Fantasia on Greensleeves; English Folk Song Suite; In the Fen Country; Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1
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Free Music Notes for Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music; The Lark Ascending; Fantasia on Greensleeves; English Folk Song Suite; In the Fen Country; Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1
Free Music Review: Love Vaughn Williams
Hit: 5 Stars
I bought this because Vaughan Williams has so many wonderful compositions. This particular recording contained many favorites including, but not exclusively the English Folk Song Suite conducted by Sir Adrian Boult and performed by the London Symphony... very moving!!!Free Music Review: Ralph!
Hit: 5 Stars
Ralph Vaughn Williams at his best; lush, sometimes-inspiring presentation of a well-chosen collection of his works.Free Music Review: Good readings lacking passion in good sound
Hit: 4 Stars
Many years after his death, Sir Adrian Boult continues to be admired as one of the linchpin -- and perhaps the archtype -- conductors of the music of his friend and countryman, Ralph Vaughan Williams. This recording, made in the autumnal years of Boutl's life, is a generous collection of bucolic English music from Vaughan Williams.
While these performances are lovely, as the other reviewers here have reported, they pale in comparison to the passion Boult provided earlier in his career. On a recording made from a Westminster LP, Boult provided more passionate and committed versions of the English Folk Song Suite, Greensleeves Fantasia and Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1 linked to a dramatic reading of the Variations on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, one of Vaughan Williams most popular and enduring tunes.
Like the comparison between his early mono recordings of Vaughan Williams' symphonies and his later stereo recording, Boult was simply older and more at ease with the music in the later recordings. While they are still wonderful, the later stereo recordings lack some of the mystery and passion of his earlier work, especially his "Antartica" symphony. People that search the Internet relentlessly can locate the earlier recordings including a CD restoration of the old Westminster record.
For those not interested in that, these renderings of Serenade to Msuic, English Folk Song Suite, Norfolk Rhapsody No.1, Fantasia On 'Greensleeves', In The Fen Country and violinist Hugh Bean's The Lark Ascending are beautifully done at a lower voltage. Either gives you the ethereal Boult although his earlier recordings, sometimes in mono, give life and breadth to these works not reflected here.
Free Music Review: Vaughn Williams: Serenade to Music
Hit: 5 Stars
Fantastic recording. Having a British conductor (especially Sir Adrian Boult), with a British Orchestra, playing works composed by a British composer, brings an exhuburance and attention to detail not found in other recordings.Free Music Review: Tolkien, a cup of Darjeeling by the fire, and this CD
Hit: 5 Stars
I laughed when I read one reviewer here who admitted that he liked to play this lovely CD while reading Tolkien. And why not? It's the magic of art to make those of us who live in the desert Southwest (or midtown Manhattan) believe we are atually in an English thatched cottage around the time of WW I, nourishing our English souls with the comforting music of Vaughan Williams.
There have been better, certainly more modern composers, but VW had the rare ability to evoke an entire culture. Every work here speaks of his total union with the English spirit, and these readings by Boult are beyond reproach. I don't traffic in "best recording ever" talk, and there are versions of the Serenade to Music that I cherish from Matthrew Best and (above all) Leonard Bernstein at the opening of Philharmonic Hall in 1962. Yet this would probably be the one CD I'd give a young friend to win him or her over to one of the most lovable and accessible of great composers.