Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
The Grinke Legacy
Frederick Grinke (violin)
Arthur Benjamin (piano) **, Michael Mullinar (piano) *
Boyd Neel Orchestra/Louis Boyd Neel
rec. 1939 (Concerto); 1940 (Lark Ascending and Eventide), West Hampstead Studios, London; 1955 (Sonata and Sonatina)
Albion Records ALBCD061 [72]
Albion Records have an extensive catalogue of new recordings. They also periodically issue archive collections with significant historical releases of the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams. So it is here. The Grinke Legacy is a model of how valuable such releases can be, even in the age of digital high fidelity. When these recordings were originally made, four of the five works had their first commercial release. There are two long chamber works here. The composer Arthur Benjamin accompanies Frederick Grinke in his Violin Sonatina. Grinke was also the dedicatee and first performer of Vaughan Williams’s Violin Sonata.
The moving force behind this project is Ronald Grames, Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Trustee. He was similarly involved in the last Albion archive release that I reviewed (here).
Before I consider the artistic value of this release, I should mention the very high quality of the sound and the presentation. The 23-page booklet, English only, is a delight from first page to last. It adds considerably to the pleasure of listening to this recital. Technically, we have here remarkably fine audio restorations. The Concerto Accademico was recorded in 1939, The Lark Ascending and Hymn Tune Prelude a year later. So, Grames has been very successful indeed. Yes, there is a degree of surface noise and swish, but the ear soon adjusts. The stability of pitch and audio levels is very good, more so because, as the notes say, the 78s for the concerto that ran a quarter-tone sharp had to be adjusted back down to A440.
The Decca engineers had achieved, in the original recordings, an impressive audio ‘picture’. Grinke’s violin is slightly forward, and truthfully yet attractively caught. The orchestral group reveals all the necessary detail, even if their bass can occasionally sound a little tubby. The important thing is that the quality of the recording and the transfer allows one to focus on the music rather than hear the carrier.
Frederick Grinke was Canadian but attended London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with Rowsby Woof (a name that can still be found on editions and teaching material) and Carl Flesch. Grinke was just twenty-one when he was actively considered for leader of the London Symphony Orchestra. At twenty-six, he led the Boyd Neal Orchestra in their famous premiere of Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge at the Salzburg Festival. He became one of Vaughan Williams’s preferred soloists, as evidenced by the Sonata dedication and these recordings. At the time of the Concerto Accademico and The Lark Ascending recordings here, he was still in his twenties.
In both these works, Grinke’s technique is admirably clean and unforced. His tone across the whole instrument is wonderfully even. (I wonder what violin he was playing; Wikipedia mentions a 1686 Rogerius and a loaned 1718 Stradivarius.) There is a focussed vibrato and complete absence of expressive excess. This makes perfect sense in the neo-Classical Concerto but perhaps is more unusual in The Lark, which receives a no-nonsense unsentimental performance. It is a relatively fast Lark, thirteen minutes compared to, say, Hugh Bean’s 14:45 with Boult, who after all these years seems to offer an ideal balance between rhapsodic fantasy and flowing elegance. Interestingly, Grinke finds more expressive freedom right at the end of the work: the orchestra has faded into the morning mist, and the soloist ascends. This recording was just the second which the work had received. There is a distinct sense that it is not burdened by the familiarity and excessive misty-eyed pastoralism that can dilute the quiet ecstasy.
A similar spirit of “ardent but unfussy” music-making – as Grames’s succinct note says – imbues the Concerto. I would never say this appears in my composer’s top ten, but it is heard best in exactly this style of performance. Grames highlights the influences and linkages that can be heard in the work with the Holst Fugal Concerto, alongside his abiding passion for Bach pre-eminent to my mind. The Boyd Neel Orchestra’s performance is good but slightly scrappy. That underlines just how far modern-day ensemble playing has progressed. This affects the Hymn-Tune Prelude “Eventide” that was recorded at the same sessions as The Lark to make up the 4th 78 side. Grinke moved from soloist to leader in this least historically significant or interesting work here.
Certainly that is the case when compared to the chamber works which complete this survey. When they were recorded for Decca fifteen years later, the technology had moved on from 78s to 33⅓ LPs. There is no surface noise, and the balance between piano and violin is very well managed, even if it lacks the ringing clarity that Decca would achieve in just a handful of years. The audio is impressive – but the music and the performances even more so.
Benjamin’s Sonatina is a relatively early work. The three movements last only 15:35 here, but somehow it feels a little self-disparaging to call it a sonatina. The closing Rondo – Con moto ma non allegro does have a certain light-heartedness that might suit the diminutive title. The first two movements, however, are of real interest and substance. The entire work, effective and well-crafted, is an engaging listen, all the more so for the presence at the keyboard of the composer himself, clearly a more than adept pianist.
It is interesting to note how Grinke’s playing significantly differs from the earlier recordings. This might be a question of recording technology, or him being 15 years older. I suspect, though, that it is more to do with Grinke adapting his style to suit the music. The tone is consciously fuller, the sound heavier and the vibrato a little wider. Just a couple of times he utilises expressive shifts, something that I expected to hear more, but that is noticeably absent in the earlier recordings. The two more recent recordings, on Dutton and on Hyperion, are very good and benefit from more modern recordings. Yet, Grinke and Benjamin find more drama in the opening Tranquilly flowing (not nearly as tranquil a movement as that title imply) and greater flickering phantasy in the central Scherzo di stile antico.
Benjamin and Vaughan Williams had a warm and friendly relationship, never mind the age gap of twenty years. The coupling of these two works on an original LP was intelligent and attractive; they both received their first commercial recordings. Grinke, the dedicatee, and pianist Michael Mullinar gave Vaughan Williams’s Sonata its premiere performance on the BBC to mark the composer’s 84th birthday in 1954.
Grames’s notes draw attention to the fact that Mullinar was also close to, and admired by, Vaughan Williams. This started when Mullinar was his pupil at the Royal College, but latterly he helped make fair copies of manuscripts and arrange piano reductions. In turn, Vaughan Williams wrote the Fantasia (quasi variazione) on the Old 104th Psalm Tune and the sonata recorded here with Mullinar’s exceptional skills in mind. Interestingly, too, in his long composing life Vaughan Williams only wrote one work entitled “sonata”. His Indian Summer is well-known, but in many ways this is a misnomer. It implies a warm backward-looking evening of life, summation of what has come before. In fact, Vaughan Williams was remarkable for the zest and adventurousness of his late music. He experimented with form and structure, instrumental textures and harmonies right up to his last works.
This is evidenced in this sonata, where the demands on both players are high and unrelenting. Even a player of Grinke’s stature was daunted by the technical hurdles the work presented. According to the notes, he suggested to the composer that perhaps the work was really a concerto rather than a sonata. Vaughan Williams, however, was certain that it was in its proper form.
Grames makes the point that – although there have been a significant number of other recordings – few attack the work with Grinke’s and Mullinar’s unflinching energy and often vehemence. While preparing to write this review, I revisited Bean on EMI, Mordkovitch on IMP and Stanzeleit on Cala. I have not heard Menuhin also on EMI, the Nash Ensemble on Hyperion or Pike on Chandos, to name some others.
Grames notes that the later versions often smooth the edges of this rugged work, often simply by slowing the tempi. This is true by the stopwatch alone, but more significant is the coiled energy of this first recording. In the closing Tema con variazioni, Bean takes a full 14:26 against Grinke’s 10:32. This places the movement firmly with Vaughan Williams’s ‘drawing down of blinds’ that haunts the enigmatic 9th Symphony,and even perhaps the Cavatina from Symphony No 8. In comparison, Grinke is a little more certain in his tread – but obviously this performance was made before those final mysteries were written.
The sonata remains little known despite all those recordings. Yet there are many familiar Vaughan Williams musical fingerprints across the three movements. It emerges in this performance as a genuinely major work of a composer still in full command of his considerable powers. After the drama in its 23:24 duration – especially in the sustained ferocity of the central Allegro furioso,without doubt the most recklessly angry version I have heard – the final solo lark-like violin ascent and piano benediction are supremely touching.
Every facet of this programme and its presentation is first-class. It is a revelatory delight to have the opportunity to hear all of Frederick Grinke’s recordings of Vaughan Williams’s music in one place. That is especially so in transfers as sophisticated and well-handled as these. Alongside the excellence of the music-making, the presentation is simply superb. The booklet is a model of how to do these things well. Packed with information and insight, and numerous photographs, this really is the template of how to present potentially unfamiliar music and artists in a way that is interesting and enlightening.
Nick Barnard
Previous reviews: Stephen Greenbank (September 2024) ~ Jonathan Woolf (October 2024)
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Contents
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Concerto Accademico (Violin Concerto in D minor) (1925)
The Lark Ascending (1914/1920)
Two Hymn-Tune Preludes; No 1 Eventide (1936)
Violin Sonata in A minor (1954) *
Arthur Benjamin (1893-1960)
Violin Sonatina (1924) **
