Search - Vaughan Williams, Pople, Lfo :: Tallis Fantasia / Partita

An underrated talent

Larry VanDeSande | Mason, Michigan United States | 01/31/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Ross Pople has a knack of bringing out the judicious qualities of British music and does so again here in a concert of Vaughan Williams favorites. I wasn't particularly taken by his reading of the famous "Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis" -- until I compared it to the even more famous version by Andre Previn. I didn't think much of the "Partita For Double String Orchestra" performed on this CD -- until I heard it the second time. When I listened to "The Lark Ascending" the first time I heard only Hugh Bean playing.



And on it went, with "In The Fen Country" being the only qualified success on first hearing. Then I listened again and compared to some of the other Vaughan Williams I owned and listened to recently. His Tallis Fantasia owns a quality Barbirolli never suggests. While not as bland and pliant as Previn, it retains all the concentrated emotion of Barbirolli without the sense of abandonment. The Partita is an exercise in restraint that comes off fine here. So does most everything, with only the warhorse "Greensleeves" not measuring up to Boult and others.



Yet that's no sweat for an album of this nature -- a look inside both the soul and brain of England's greatest composer. Ross Pople has a discography heavy on English composers and you hear why in this recording. He is both at ease witn the pastoral nature of English music and in sync with its intellectualism. This is a fine concert by forces most people don't know and underestimate. The recording's been around since 1993, another of Pople's many unknown successes to match his disks of Elgar and the sinfonia concertantes of Haydn and Mozart.





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An important album, played naturally.

L. Stein | Long Island, NY, USA | 05/17/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; Fantasia onThere is certain air of unworldliness and a great deal of nostalgia of the English countryside in Vaughan Williams' music and it is brought out here very well. Ross Pople does not try to force out the nostalgia (and this music is heavy with nostalgia), and he is not playing with his heart on his sleeve, he is allowing the music to speak for itself and the nostalgia is even more deeply felt as a result. My favorite piece here is the Lark ascending. So often this is played like a concertante piece with the Lark (the violin) flying with all his might all over the place-squawk!.... but here, pasted on a view of the colorful English countryside is a Lark, gliding peacefully, gracefully and effortlessly through the air.



It do not wish to compare these performances to prior ones by Boult and Barbirolli, for these great conductors also understood what Vaughan Williams was trying to say and they expressed it extremely well. This is just another wonderful recording."