VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: The Lark Ascending; Fantasia on Greensleeves; Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. ELGAR: Serenade in E minor, Op. 20; Variations on an Original Theme “Enigma,” Op. 36
David Nolan, violin; London Philharmonic Orchestra; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Vernon Handley
BRIDGE (originally Classics for Pleasure) [76:19]—Vernon Handley—now there was a conductor who understood the weight of silence as much as sound. These recordings, scattered across a decade from 1983 to 1990, capture him at the height of powers that never quite received their due from the broader musical establishment. But those of us who followed his work knew. We always knew.
The program itself is almost absurdly familiar—a greatest hits compilation that might seem calculated to appeal to the casual listener browsing the discount bins. Yet familiarity breeds not contempt here but rather an opportunity to measure interpretive authority against decades of accumulated performance practice. Handley, who absorbed the Boult tradition without merely imitating it, brings to these warhorses a quality I can only describe as patient inevitability.
David Nolan’s Lark Ascending soars without the affectation that mars so many accounts of this treacherous work. The opening violin entry—that impossibly exposed ascent—has a quality of discovered spontaneity rather than rehearsed rapture. Listen to how he shapes the long-breathed phrases around 6’30”: there’s a subtle portamento on the descent that suggests actual birdsong rather than Edwardian pastoral nostalgia. The LPO strings provide an accompaniment of remarkable transparency, their tone warm but never cloying. Handley understands that this piece lives or dies on the tension between the soloist’s freedom and the orchestra’s gravitational pull. Here, the balance feels instinctive.
The two Vaughan Williams fantasias reveal the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic in superb form. The Greensleeves arrangement—yes, Ralph Greaves’s version, not the composer’s own—could easily become saccharine. It doesn’t. Handley keeps the tempo moving just enough to prevent sentimentality from settling like fog, and the orchestral colors have real transparency. But it’s the Tallis Fantasia that shows what this conductor could achieve when the music demanded architectural thinking.
This performance unfolds with liturgical spaciousness. The antiphonal string choirs—full orchestra, smaller ensemble, solo quartet—emerge from and recede into each other with the kind of natural ebb and flow that suggests tidal movement rather than calculated effect. At the great climax (around 10’45”), the massed strings produce a sound of such burnished intensity that you can almost smell the rosin dust. Yet Handley never pushes. The fortissimo arrives because the music’s internal logic demands it, not because a conductor is determined to make an impression.
The recorded sound varies, inevitably, given the different venues. St. Augustine’s, Kilburn—a church that has hosted countless recordings—provides a halo of resonance around the Lark and Elgar’s Serenade. The Liverpool Philharmonic Hall offers greater clarity for the Fantasias, though perhaps at some cost in warmth. Watford Town Hall, that reliable workhorse of British album, gives the Enigma Variations a directness that suits Handley’s approach.
About that Enigma: this is emphatically not the blazing, extroverted reading that some conductors favor. Handley takes his time—some will say too much time—but the architecture never sags. “R.P.A.” has a delicious swagger in the winds, the bassoons particularly characterful. “Nimrod” unfolds with an absence of rhetorical emphasis that becomes, paradoxically, its own kind of eloquence. When the climax arrives, those LPO horns (such a fine section in this period) produce a bronze glow that seems to come from somewhere deep in the orchestra’s collective memory.
The "finale" presents Handley’s approach in microcosm. Where some conductors treat “E.D.U.” as an excuse for orchestral athleticism, he maintains a steady, almost ceremonial tread. The great peroration from 3’16” onward has unforced dignity—no whipping up of synthetic excitement, no manufactured frenzy. Some will find this too restrained. I find it profoundly satisfying, a reminder that Elgar’s self-portrait contains elements of reserve and even melancholy alongside the expected confidence.
Technical quibbles? A few. The violin tone in the Lark occasionally thins out in the highest register, though this may be as much about microphone placement as reading. The Tallis Fantasia could use slightly more separation between the string choirs—the spatial element that’s so crucial to the work’s effect doesn’t always register with ideal clarity. And yes, that Enigma "finale" will strike some listeners as too careful, too unwilling to really cut loose.
But these are marginal complaints about performances that get the essential things right. Handley’s idiom is natural, his authority unforced, his understanding of English musical rhetoric complete. He inherited Boult’s mantle not by copying the older maestro’s mannerisms but by absorbing the same fundamental principles: clarity, structural coherence, fidelity to the score’s markings, and an absence of interpretive narcissism.
The Bridge reissue (originally on Classics for Pleasure, that much-missed EMI subsidiary) makes these recordings available again at budget price. The transfers sound clean, the documentation adequate if not lavish. For anyone wanting central, authoritative performances of this repertoire without interpretive eccentricity or technical compromise, this disc delivers handsomely. And for those of us who valued Handley’s work throughout his long career, it’s a welcome reminder of what we’ve lost.
