Grieg: Våren, elegiac melody for strings, Op. 34 No. 2 (Last Spring)

With heavily atmospheric TV Scandinavian crime drama now all the rage, here is an essentially upbeat antidote to the leaden skies of northern Europe filling our TV screens! This collection features firm favourites such as Alfvén's Midsommarvake (Midsummer Vigil aka Swedish Rhapsody) and Grieg's Våren (Last Spring) and also less familiar works by Halvorsen, Svendsen, Bull and Nielsen. Completing the well-filled Smörgåsbord are three delightful miniatures by 'the Johann Strauss of the north' Hans Lumbye. Many of these performances, including six works conducted by Øivin Fjeldstad and John Frandsen's 1955 recording of Kuhnau's Elverhøj, are on CD for the first time.

This collection has been prepared with three main aims: firstly to prove that the so-called boundaries between light and classical music are not as insurmountable as some people seem to imagine; secondly to illustrate that many composers, who may usually be associated with more serious works, also had their lighter moments; and thirdly to offer several examples of the tasteful way in which arrangers of the 20th century adapted the classics to make them more instantly appealing to their audience. For many years such ‘tampering with the classics’ was banned by the BBC in Britain, although commercial recordings could be freely purchased. However a lack of broadcasts obviously affected sales, which partly explains why such recordings were more common in the United States than in Britain. Among the leading US musicians who often strayed into classical territory were David Carroll, Andre Kostelanetz, Percy Faith, Clebanoff and even Ray Conniff. They are joined by Charles Williams, Angela Morley and other familiar figures on the UK scene.

This disc restores to the catalogue, after an absence of more than 50 years, Koussevitzky’s second recording of Peter and the Wolf, with Eleanor Roosevelt as narrator. Taped during his last recording sessions on 29th November, 1950, Koussevitzky’s performance of Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 is given with an electricity that transcends studio conditions, yet it is not without light, shade and emotional retreat. The final such example of Koussevitzky’s art, which pertinently concludes this disc, is a rapt and expressive account of Grieg’s The Last Spring, notable for the warmth and intensity of the Boston strings.