Lark on a String

The Lark Quartet brings its stellar 34 year career to a close with this celebratory album. On it, the Lark Quartet offers premiere recordings of works by John Harbison, Kenji Bunch, Anna Weesner and Andrew Waggoner, all composed for this occasion. Assisting Lark Quartet are Yousif Sheronick, percussion (Bunch), Romie de Guise-Langlois, clarinet (Weesner) and the Lark's four founding members (Waggoner).

If there were an international style of conducting Vaughan Williams', Bernard Haitink would be its foremost practitioner. But although there have been international conductors who have taken up Vaughan Williams' very, very English music, virtually all of them took him up with English orchestras. Slatkin, Stokowski, even Rozhdestvensky used English conductors when they led their Vaughan Williams, and Haitink, the most international of international conductors, used the London Philharmonic for his Vaughan Williams. Ultimately, no matter how international Haitink's interpretations may be, his Vaughan Williams performance sounds as English as shepherd's pie.

“You have the sense when listening to Haydn that you’re in very good company; though he’s a great genius, he somehow seems like one of us”. The words of Philip Setzer. Beautifully recorded, exceptionally well played, the Emerson’s traversal of seven quartets of Haydn offers a wonderful musical journey – 1772 to 1799 in terms of chronology; in terms of musical values and growth, well, Haydn’s inventiveness and imagination are simply remarkable.

Following their hugely successful cycle of Vaughan Williams’ nine symphonies, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra is led by Andrew Manze in this album of the composer’s most popular shorter orchestral works. This disc features Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, Fantasia on Greensleeves, The Lark Ascending and The Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus, as well as the rarely performed orchestral version of The Serenade to Music.