Here’s another strong performance of Vaughan Williams’s Violin Sonata (1954) to set beside those fine versions listed above which have come my way over the last six or so months. I like the intensity, clean-limbed vigour and sense of purpose Lydia Mordkovitch and Julian Milford bring to this extraordinarily inventive piece. If Mordkovitch is perhaps a less accurate advocate than her young German rival, Susanne Stanzeleit, her playing radiates just that crucial bit of extra authority and wisdom: sample, for instance, how perceptively Mordkovitch gauges the mood of resignatory chill in the coda to the Scherzo.
Of especial interest to all VW completists will be the composer’s own violin and piano arrangement of The lark ascending, in which intimate guise the work received its first airing in 1920. Mordkovitch gives a distinctive rendering, impulsive yet concentrated too. The results are certainly refreshing, if not necessarily the way one would always want to hear this sublime music. Michael Mullinar (who partnered violinist Frederick Grinke at the 1954 premiere of the Sonata and also recorded it with him, Decca, 8/56 – nla) was responsible for the sympathetic arrangement of the Fantasia on “Greensleeves”, while the exquisite miniatures which comprise the Six Studies in English folk song are outstandingly well realized. For my money, however, the real discovery on this collection must be the Two Pieces (first published in 1923, though in all probability conceived before 1914). I found the “Romance” particularly memorable, a ravishing, deeply-felt outpouring of restrained lyricism.
On the whole, then, utterly sympathetic music-making. The engineers have secured an expert balance within the generous acoustic of Forde Abbey in Dorset, but tonally the results are perhaps not as ingratiating as one would wish, with Mordkovitch’s tone acquiring a slightly aggressive, wiry edge in louder moments. A hearty recommendation, none the less.'