David Lloyd-Jones has produced a series that, with certain exceptions (Alwyn’s reading of The Enchanted Island, for example), outdoes the composer’s classic Lyrita accounts. The recorded sound is beautiful without stepping into the over-the-top. One of the best of Naxos’s Alwyn collection. © 2012 Classical Net Read complete review

As well as including the world premiere recording of the melancholic but tender Five Preludes, this disc affords us a harrowing performance of the Tragic Interlude and the darkly coloured tone poem Autumn Legends.

Closing with a joyful and committed performance of the Suite of Scottish Dances, this disc is a wonderful cross-section of the unique musicianship achieved by Alwyn. The RLPO gives a balanced, rich performance, wonderfully directed by the ever musically sympathetic David Lloyd-Jones. If you are building up a collection of English music, this disc is a must-have. If you are not, then you should be.

Though the Five Preludes were performed at the BBC Proms in the year they were composed (1927), this is their world premiere recording. Each prelude lasts under two minutes, despite the large orchestral forces, and yet is wonderfully characterful. The Tragic Interlude, prefaced by three lines from Aldington's novel Death of a Hero, is a harrowing work given an intense and dramatic performance here. The following Autumn Legend also has a preface, this time from Rossetti's The Blessed Damozel. The piece, Alwyn's personal tribute to the poet and painter, is another moody work in which the performers create an excellent sense of atmosphere. The disc finishes with a suite of charming Scottish Dances that are given a joyful, light and lively performance in this superb collection of brilliantly-constructed compositions.

Overture to a Masque is a perky affair that sports a motif that circles swooningly close to Blue Moon and the waft of dance-hall cigarette smoke. Around this evocative B section is the fiery drama of Alwyn in dramatic mode. Three years later came the Concerto Grosso No. 1, something of a concerto for orchestra, full of fanfare bristle and commanding opportunities for, amongst others, the trumpet principal, percussion and solo violin. It was dedicated to the LSO’s then leader George Stratton and ‘my friends in the LSO’—the orchestra in which Alwyn was a flautist. There’s a lovely velvety cushion beneath the cor anglais’s solo in the second movement and the strings respond with real sensitivity in their supportive role. This is refined writing full of excellent distribution of voices. I imagine the vivace finale would have suited Stratton’s rather biting, resinous tone well and there are puckish opportunities for orchestral solos alongside plenty of neo-classical frolics.

The Pastoral Fantasia was premiered by Watson Forbes. It’s a warm, nostalgic opus, very reminiscent—and surely deliberately so—of The Lark Ascending. Those previously unrecorded Preludes were written in 1927. They’re deftly scored miniatures and embrace a charming little waltz and some Chinese effects. What’s most admirable is Alwyn’s gift for quick characterisation—that and his writing for winds which, as one might predict, is first class. The Tragic Interlude followed in 1936—full of baleful, brooding, heavy-booted drama that ends resignedly. Autumn Legend for cor anglais and orchestra is an atmospheric Nordic affair, somewhat aloof and chilly. Whereas the Suite of Scottish Dances is a picture postcard miscellany of frolicsome verve.

The sound in Philharmonic Hall has been captured with first class attention to detail. The two instrumental soloists, Philip Dukes (viola) and Rachael Pankhurst (cor anglais) play with poetic warmth and technical address. The programme’s balance has a pleasing diversity; terse, windswept, ebullient, frisky, serious. Not the place to start for those coming fresh to the composer because it’s too heterogeneous a collection but definitely one for Alwyn collectors.

Here’s yet another enticing helping of Alwyn courtesy of David Lloyd-Jones, Naxos and the William Alwyn Foundation (administered by the tireless Andrew Knowles). Of the seven works on this latest collection, the earliest, the Five Preludes from 1927, receives a first recording. Premiered by Sir Henry Wood at a Queen’s Hall Prom that year, these colourful and varied miniatures constitute an extremely likeable sequence, the lullaby of No 4 tapping a vein of wistful lyricism not far removed from that espoused by John Ireland. Wood was also due to conduct the first performance of the fizzing Overture to a Masque (1940) but the London Blitz put paid to that and the manuscript only came to light 50 years later, buried in the LSO’s archives.

The pensive Pastoral Fantasia (1939) for viola and strings was another work which gathered dust for over half a century—and that despite an auspicious debut entrusted to Watson Forbes and the BBC SO under Sir Adrian Boult. Philip Dukes makes the most of Alwyn’s grateful solo writing, while the RLPO’s principal cor anglais Rachael Pankhurst is on no less eloquent form in the dusky Autumn Legend from 1954 (with its haunting echoes of Debussy’s “Nuages” and Sibelius’s “The Swan of Tuonela”). Be it in the invigoratingly clean-cut dialogue of the 1943 Concerto grosso no 1 (inscribed to Alwyn’s friends and colleagues in the LSO, in which he played flute), imploring heartache of the Tragic Interlude (1936) or jaunty skip of the Suite of Scottish Dances (1946), Lloyd-Jones and the RLPO serve all this material handsomely. The sound has ample presence but is inclined to harden just a smidgeon whenever the decibels increase (string-tone, too, might be kinder). Alwynites needn’t hold back.

With the next selection Concerto Grosso No. 1 (there are three), which dates from 1943, we get a contemporary take on that old tried-and-true baroque form. In three movements, the first is somewhat humorous with boisterous outbursts from a variety of solo instruments along with the percussion section. A lazy adagio follows and then a spirited finale where the instrumental merrymakers from the first movement return to whoop it up.

Pastorale Fantasia (1939), scored for viola and strings, might easily have been entitled The Hawk Ascending. That's because it bears a pastoral resemblance to Vaughan Williams' Lark... (1914, revised 1920), but features a stringed instrument of greater weight than the violin. It's a gorgeous piece and welcome addition to the small body of music for viola and orchestra.

A world première recording is next with Five Preludes (1927), which was Alwyn's first orchestral work. It's worth getting this disc for these delightfully colorful miniatures alone. Highlights include the nonchalant first, Verdi-like third and Eastern-tinged fifth.

Inspired by a novel about the First World War (1914-18), Tragic Interlude (1936) is one of Alwyn's darkest, most moving pieces. Scored for two horns, timpani and strings, the horror of war is most effectively dramatized. Hearing this it’s easy to understand why his film scores are so effective.

Composed as a tribute to English poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), Autumn Legend (1954) is for English horn and strings. Prefaced by a quote from Rossetti's poem The Blessed Damozel, which inspired Debussy to write his cantata of the same name (1888), Alwyn's score is one of his most beautiful. It ranks with the finest contemporary pieces ever written for this rarely heard double-reed instrument and orchestra.

The CD concludes with a Suite of Scottish Dances (1946 and there are seven), which fans of Malcolm Arnold's several sets of British dances will find indispensable. Brilliantly orchestrated, this Highland hoedown will have you cutting a rug!

Listening to the spirited performances David Lloyd-Jones gets from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra it's easy to understand why he's considered one of Britain's finest conductors of English music. What's more, it would appear that Alwyn is one of his specialties. Taking that into consideration along with the Naxos bill of fare, you can't go wrong with this release.

The recordings are good from the soundstage standpoint, but a bit of digital grain in the strings precludes giving this an audiophile demonstration rating. But don't let that stop you from enjoying these wonderful selections.