English Tone Pictures: Bax, Delius, and Ireland.(Sound recording review)

English Tone Pictures: Bax, Delius, and Ireland: Sir John Barbirolli, London Symphony Orchestra and Halle Orchestra. EMI 0946 3 79984 2 7.

I mean, who would rather having conducting English pastoral music than Sir John Barbirolli? Well, maybe Sir Thomas Beecham or Sir Adrian Boult, but close enough. Barbirolli was born in London of an Italian father and a French mother, but he was an Englishman through and through. Like Beecham and Boult, English music was in his blood and bones. It's no better expressed than here in his collection of short English tone poems, presented by EMI on one of their "Great Recordings of the Century" albums.

The program begins and ends with evocations of England, first up being Arnold Bax's portrait of the fifth-century coast of Cornwall, "Tintagel," the place of King Arthur's birth. The final piece is John Ireland's picture of twentieth-century downtown London, "A London Overture." The two works couldn't be more different, but they are excellent, contrasting bookends for the collection. "Tintagel" is, of course, the more Romantic, in both senses--fanciful ...