RCA Re-releases Seminal Andre Previn Recordings

Twenty-two years ago, Andre Previn served notice of his affinity for 20th-Century English music with a stunning RCA recording of William Walton’s thunderously vulgar, hectoring, over-reaching, uneven and, for more than a few listeners, hugely invigorating First Symphony.

With each successive new recording of that work, and there have been half a dozen during the past decade, the ghost of Previn’s long-vanished recording with the London Symphony Orchestra has been invoked.

Now, inevitably, RCA has brought it back on compact disc (7830, mid-price) proving that memory didn’t play us false. It remains a marvel of vivifying interpretation and brilliant execution--more terse and forcefully dramatic than any competing edition, including Previn’s own recent remake (Telarc 80125) in which Walton’s appealingly rough edges are smoothed over.

RCA’s recording remains thrilling, too, for its fearless reproduction of the 1967 London Symphony brass in all its snarling glory and its battering-ram timpani. There’s a delightful bonus, too, in the form of Vaughan Williams’ folksy “Wasps” Overture.

Previn and the relatively little-known British conductor Bryden Thomson are at work on separate cycles of the Vaughan Williams symphonies--a second go-round for Previn, whose earlier cycle (with the LSO) is in the process of re-release by RCA.

Each of the latest installments of the cycles-in-progress is excellent. Previn and the Royal Philharmonic apply themselves with splendid breadth and suavity to the composer’s supreme lyric inspiration, the Fifth Symphony (Telarc 80158), coupled with the Fantasia on a Theme by Tallis, that work’s 13th appearance on CD.

Thomson and the London Symphony (on Chandos 8633) give us what is commonly held to be the most recalcitrant of VW syms, his 1934 Fourth.

But the conductor seemingly disregards the silly “fascist menace” program with which the symphony has been saddled, choosing instead to seek out and project the English folk flavor lurking amid the mild cacophony and considerable agitation. The coupling is Vaughan Williams’ “Concerto Accademico” for violin and strings, a lively bit of neo-classical whimsy, the solo executed with darting brightness by Kenneth Sillito.

The Fifth Symphony appears as well in a new recorded version (Virgin Classics 90733) from the Royal Philharmonic under the direction of Yehudi Menuhin--more tautly inflected, generally faster than Previn’s and hardly less attractive for exposing a certain subtle menace amid the pastoral lyricism.

As companion piece, Menuhin offers the rarely heard Vaughan Williams Concerto for Two Pianos, a rowdy, somewhat disjointed effort not without its beefy charms. The solo chores are energetically and skillfully handled by the American team of Ralph Markham and Kenneth Broadway.

Benjamin Britten’s vocal music has so long been the special province of Peter Pears that one can feel disoriented in the presence of a singer lacking Pears’ mannerisms. But the performance by Scottish tenor Neil Mackie of the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings (EMI- Angel 49480) provides an attractive alternative.

Mackie’s instrument is freer and firmer than Pears’, his tones ring rather than being squeezed and his interpretive instincts incline less toward the lachrymose than Pears’. The tenor receives strong support from the Scottish Chamber under Steuart Bedford and his co-soloist is master hornist Barry Tuckwell.

The remainder of this Britten program has been chosen with an eye toward novelty and/or cheekiness: a poignant setting of Tennyson’s “Now sleeps the crimson petal,” intended for but not included in the Serenade; songs by Schubert, Schumann and Purcell in Britten’s deliciously wacky orchestrations and all expertly delivered by Mackie, and the early “Rossini” Suite, which metamorphosed into the “Soirees musicales.”

The Guildhall String Ensemble comprises 11 young graduates of London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama whose lively interpretations and springily taut ensemble bring to mind the earliest, palmiest days of Neville Marriner’s Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

The Guildhallers make their recorded debut (on RCA 7846) with Britten’s “Simple Symphony” and three less frequently encountered pieces: Tippett’s “Little Music”; the Variations on an Elizabethan Theme (“Sellenger’s Round”) by a bevy of composers, including Britten, Tippett and Walton, and the irresistibly dashing Walton Sonata for String Orchestra, the composer’s 1947 string quartet in an orchestration he made in 1970 for Marriner and the Academy.