LSO String Ensemble/Simovich

String works by Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Britten

LSO Live

I’M not a man for the prosaic, but if I don’t point this out someone will, like a blunt instrument, in a concert hall conversation. This otherwise superb disc, featuring the London Symphony Orchestra String Ensemble under its leader Roman Simovich, does not present the pieces in the order in which they appear on the front cover, the back cover header, or on the disc itself. I don’t know how it happened, but somebody will find this illogical and disconcerting. Someone, somewhere, will stick this disc on and settle down with a large brandy, to be lulled by the spacious depths of the LSO’s gorgeous playing of Vaughan Williams’ Tallis Fantasia, and will be discomnogerated, in the words of the great Ken, by the rolling plains of Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro sweeping out to meet them, at possible risk to the stability of the brandy in the glass (a heinous crime). The playing is outstanding, and the textures brim with life and, and, in a great performance of Britten’s Frank Bridge Variations, which bounds off the page with spectacular characterisation, sheer energy.

Michael Tumelty