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After the Friday night and thelast night, we've got some meat-and-potatoes Vaughan Williams today. We start with a work we already heard, in " Who can resist the 'elaborate' and 'extravagant' song of the high-flying lark? ," the rhapsodicfor violin and orchestra. I noted back then how the work has been tending to spread over the years, as it has come to be played more often, and in this connection mentioned the two recordings conducted by Sir Adrian Boult, which reflect that trend: 13:20 in 1952, 14:41 in 1967 -- and the latter is rather an up-tempo pace by more recent standards.Here they are.Setting aside the little, surely Vaughan Williams' best-known work is thefantasia, the one on a theme of Thomas Tallis. Given its deep, burnished beauty, this isn't hard to understand.To dispel any notion that Vaughan Williams wrote only in modes sultry and elegiac, here are the Overture and the "March Past of the Kitchen Utensils" from his "Aristophanic Suite" from, incidental music written for the Aristophanes play. This music is not only jolly and jaunty but downright satirical (appropriately, for the subject), starting with the buzzing opening of the Overture. It all suggests, rather surprisingly, a sort of British Prokofiev.

Labels: Sunday Classics, Vaughan Williams