Maybe you have to be English to fully appreciate this disc. One learns from the booklet that the opening of
Vaughan Williams' Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1 "evokes the sense of sky and space one feels in East Anglia." What details would have to be changed so that it would be evocative of, say, Bishops Itchington? Yet this disc, performed and issued by Manchester's venerable
Hallé Orchestra, offers plenty of landscapes accessible to all. The disc is one of those worth the purchase price for a single performance: that of The Lark Ascending (track 2). This
Vaughan Williams rhapsody for violin and orchestra is a work English musicians can play in their sleep -- and often do. The
Hallé's leader,
Lyn Fletcher, is not a big name among violinists, but she gives the piece the hushed yet electric quality that made it a favorite in the first place.
Arnold Bax's Tintagel also fares better than usual, with its undercurrent of romantic passion coming to the fore. All of the works, as the album title suggests, are programmatic pieces associated with a specific or general landscape, and there are a few less-famous pieces mixed in:
Gerald Finzi's The Fall of the Leaf is a pastoral yet turbulent work;
Delius' On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring is joined by its less familiar companion in the Two Pieces for Small Orchestra, Summer Night on the River.
Elgar's setting of
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "As Torrents in Summer" is drawn from a long choral work called King Olaf that is a rare find on U.S. programs. It is one of two unaccompanied choral pieces that close out the album, with a rather jarring effect. It might have been more effective to insert these two pieces as an intermezzo in the middle of the program, but this detracts little from an hour of music that would make a great gift for anyone heading to the English countryside on vacation -- or on holiday. The enhanced CD also includes video content.