Vernon Handley

With the sublime The Lark Ascending as its centrepiece, this collection illustrates the way that Vaughan Williams and his contemporaries expressed their national identity, drawing inspiration from folk song, landscape, poetry and the rich history of British music. With favourites by Elgar, Delius, Butterworth and Walton––including Elgar’s unforgettable Introduction and Allegro and Delius’s Summer Night on the River––the works gathered here are romantic, nostalgic and quintessentially British.

Produced by EMI Classics in partnership with the prestigious National Gallery in London, The National Gallery Collection is a budget-price catalogue series bringing together the very best in fine art and classical music.

The collection features a selection of classical masterworks in celebrated recordings from the EMI Classics catalogue, brought together with great artworks from The National Gallery’s permanent collection.

The best-loved and most popular works by Frederick Delius, performed by the world’s leading artists, in an accessible format at budget price as part of the ESSENTIAL CLASSICS series.

Celebrated in this collection are the violin concertos by Dvorák and Bruch that first propelled Tasmin Little into the spotlight, demonstrating her masterful interpretative skill and garnering widespread critical acclaim. These breakthrough recordings are complemented here by Little’s take on Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole and Bruch’s folk melody-inspired Scottish Fantasy, described by the violinist as ‘an admirably glorious work’.

This collection of recordings illuminates two different sides of violinist Tasmin Little’s accomplished playing. While the Brahms and Sibelius Concertos are a testament to her technical skill and breadth of expression, the Pärt works display a more pared-back approach, making full use of Little’s pure and resonant tone.

This collection of music from 20th-century ballets features such master conductors of British repertoire as Boult, Previn, Handley and Mackerras – who also, drawing on the works of Sir Arthur Sullivan, wrote Pineapple Poll for John Cranko. Dame Ninette de Valois choreographed the chessboard machinations of Bliss’s Checkmate, here complemented by Elgar’s much-loved Enigma Variations, Walton’s witty Façade, elemental dances from Holst’s opera The Perfect Fool, and colourful pieces by Berners, Lambert and Gordon.

This release is a tribute to Vernon Handley's long and valued association with the London Philharmonic Orchestra extending back over 45 years.

A very special relationship exists with the music of Edward Elgar as the London Philharmonic Orchestra is often referred to as ‘Elgar’s Orchestra’. The LPO also had a special association with Vernon Handley and this release in a small way acknowledges Handley's contribution to the Orchestra's life. It marks the first re-issue onto a single disc of the acclaimed recording of Dame Janet Baker's Sea Pictures from a concert recorded by Capital Radio in 1984 and a landmark premiere release from the same concert of Elgar's Symphony No.1. When the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Elgar Society were planning a concert to mark the 50th anniversary of Elgar’s death, Vernon Handley was the natural choice of conductor. Handley’s feeling for English music was second to none, and his rapport with Elgar’s music in particular is clear in these performances recorded live at the anniversary concert. Sea Pictures evokes contrasting images of the sea from ve poems sung here by Dame Janet Baker, a peerless interpreter of the work. Elgar’s first Symphony is one of Elgar’s finest works for orchestra – hailed after its première as ‘the greatest symphony of modern times’. Here in this recording Handley conducts a wonderfully paced reading of the Symphony and the LPO have performed and recorded this symphony countless times, rarely with more refinement and assurance than heard here for the first time in this live recording.

Includes scholarly CD notes by Elgar expert and past Chairman of the Elgar Society, Andrew Neill.