Page 429 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

to the fact that Warner is (in effect) reissuing that earlier box. You will also
find my reviews of CDs 8 and 9 – Piano Concerto (in the two piano version)
and Job, Serenade to Music, The Lark Ascending as well as The Pilgrim’s
Progress etc- conducted by Boult (review).

So what additions are there to the old Collector’s edition? On CD13 in the
new box there’s the Fantasia on ‘Greensleeves’ and the Galop from the Suite
for Viola and Small Orchestra, heard here in Watson Forbes’ arrangements
and played by Herbert Downes, Osian Ellis and Gerald Moore. On CD16 I’m
not aware that the choral version of Linden Lea or Wither’s Rocking
Hymn were present on that older box, one sung by the Choir of the New
College Oxford and the other by the choir of King’s College, Cambridge;
seven minutes in all. On CD22 the older box seems to contain Joy, Shipmate,
Joy! and A Clear Midnight though they’re not in the new edition. It’s not
always easy to make a direct comparison between the two boxes so my
apologies if I have omitted anything.

Everything has pretty much all been released before, sometimes multiply,
and effectively in toto over a decade ago. It seems ridiculous to rehash
comment. And what more could Warner do, given it has to select from its
stable of labels? It has invited Stephen Johnson to write a booklet note.
Johnson is a fine writer but he has been given two pages to sum up RVW’s
achievement and a man can only do so much in that very limited space.
Otherwise, the notes are also in French and German, the remainder taken up
with an alphabetical checklist of works with a direction to the relevant CD
that contains the music. The 40-page booklet of the older edition has
therefore shrunk to 14, half of which is taken up by the works. There are no
discographical details other than the original year of production and any
subsequent remastering, details that are contained at the bottom of the
individual wallets. Performers are, of course, all noted on the back of the
wallets.

As for those discs they’re housed in attractive wallet covers with paintings
from artists of the period – Charles Corder, Benjamin Williams Leader,
Hughes Stanton, and John Everett Millais amongst them. But you’re not
going to buy this set for the wallet art, are you?

There have been no new remasterings so far as I’m aware.

I’d forgotten how effectively Handley paced the symphonies or how
successful a symphonic set this was. He had all the attributes of his mentor
and guide, Boult, but had the Liverpool orchestra playing at the top of its
form – better than Boult and his LPO in his mono cycle, in fact – and heard in
splendid sound. The sound is something that always set this cycle apart
when it was first issued, pro and occasionally contra – the singers being too
distant in the Sea Symphony for example (they aren’t too distant in this
release, though one singer is far better than the other). For me the Fifth is a
slight disappointment, a touch too tight-lipped. I’ll always need Previn.