Romances and Serenades from Cleveland

My last post from the Clevelanders and conductor Louis Lane elicited a plea from long-time blog follower Douglas (coppinsuk), who wanted to hear the companion LP Romances and Serenades from the same source.

I warned Douglas that my copy is in mono, but that was fine with him, and I hope with you. (The sound is excellent, regardless.)

The previous LP was called Rhapsody, and included the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 and such. This program has nothing so beefy. In keeping with its title, the works are generally much lighter.

Louis Lane

The longest work is Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending. Britain's Classic FM says it is the nation's favorite classical work - and has been for 11 years.

The retailer Presto Music lists 168 releases of the piece, although presumably with some duplicates. So imagine a world where there was only one recording available - the 1952 effort by Jean Pougnet with Sir Adrian Boult and the London Philharmonic. That was the situation when this performance by Cleveland concertmaster Rafael Druian and the Cleveland Sinfonietta came on the market.

Rafael Druian

The reviewers uniformly praised the performance. Edward Greenfield in The Gramophone wrote, "I have a feeling that the very 'authenticity' of many English performances ... lies more than anything in their very tentativeness musically." He added, "Give me polish and confidence like this ... when it is allied with such warm, genuine emotions."

It's not just Druian who is outstanding here - there are notably assured contributions from the solo clarinet and horn. The cover notes say that the Sinfonietta is composed of "21 first-chair and supporting players from the internationally famous Cleveland Orchestra." This suggests that the musicians may be principal clarinet Robert Marcellus and principal horn Myron Bloom, but we can't be sure.

Druian also is featured in Delius' Serenade from Hassan, along with the orchestra's second harpist, Martha Dalton (who is identified on the label). Greenfield claims the overall performance is "soupy". This is the least successful item on the disc, but also its shortest.

Another English piece is contributed by Peter Warlock, his Serenade for Strings, sometimes called the Serenade for Frederick Delius on His 60th Birthday. Warlock wrote the piece in Delius' style. You can hear Constant Lambert's 1937 and 1941 recordings of the Warlock and Delius compositions via this post.

Much darker hued is the Sibelius Romance in C major of 1903. Greenfield says it emerges from this performance as "something more than an occasional piece."

The lightest work on the program is probably Jean Françaix's Serenade for Small Orchestra, a delightful piece that critics like to call "cheeky," and so it is. This is an accomplished performance, equal to the two previous recordings featured on this blog - a 1939 version from Hamburg under Eugen Jochum, and a 1968 reading from the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and Anshel Brusilow.

I mentioned that this record has fine sound - although I should note that it was bright enough to loosen your fillings until I adjusted the usual 1960s Columbia (and Epic) glare.