Rawsthorne: Light Music for Strings

2010

“The most substantial offering here, the resourceful and magnificently crafted Concertofor String Orchestra, dates from 1949. David Lloyd-Jones and his admirably prepared group give a performance which, in its emotional scope and keen vigour, outshines Boult's 1966 recording with the BBC Symphony Orchestra (nla). Not only does Lloyd-Jones achieve a more thrusting urgency in the outer movements, he also locates an extra sense of slumbering tragedy in the Lento e mesto. He gives a sparkling account of the immensely engaging Divertimento, written for Harry Blech and the London Mozart Players in 1962; the rumbustious concluding 'Jig' is as good a place as any to sample the spick-and-span response of the Northern Chamber Orchestra. The Concertantepastorale, written for the Hampton Court Orangery Concerts, is an atmospheric, beautifully wrought 10-minute essay for solo flute, horn and strings. It's succeeded by the perky Light Music for strings, composed in 1938 for the Workers' Music Association and based on Catalan folk-tunes. Then there's McCabe's expert orchestration of the miniature Suite for recorder and strings, the second of whose four linked movements is a reworking of a ballad from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. But the most exciting discovery has to be the 1963-4 ElegiacRhapsody, a deeply felt threnody for string orchestra written in memory of Rawsthorne's friend, the poet Louis MacNeice. Not only does it pack a wealth of first-rate invention and incident into its 10-minute duration, it attains a pitch of anguished expression possibly unrivalled in this figure's entire output.”

“Yet another Naxos/British music bull’s eye, comprising an imaginative programme realized with great sympathy by all involved.”