On track: On home territory with Vaughan Williams

By WILLIAM DART

It must have been serendipity that brought me a copy of the NZSO's new Vaughan Williams CD just a few days before RVW's birthday. (For those who are into counting, he would have been 131 last Sunday.)

NZSO music director James Judd is on home territory with this composer. The textures of Fantasia on Greensleeves tantalise the ears just as certain woven fabrics might tempt the fingers, with the conductor taking care to bring out the key inner instrumental lines.

When it comes to the first-rate account of the Tallis Fantasia it's the sound that also bewitches with the immaculate layering producer Tim Handley achieves between the three string groups.

The full forces of the orchestra join in for the less familiar Norfolk Rhapsody and In the Fen Country. Both are substantial pieces and can move from the pastoral to the passionate within a few bars, made to measure for the flamboyant Judd.

In the Fen Country particularly impresses with the subtlety of its language, including fragile dialogues between cor anglais and viola.

The final work is his Concerto Grosso, cleverly written for a massed orchestra of varying abilities (400 players took the stage of the Royal Albert Hall for its first performance in 1950). This is hearty, muscular music; Vaughan Williams obviously enjoyed donning a Baroque bonnet and the NZSO similarly have fun playing the result.

Back in the 1980s, Turkish pianist Idil Biret visited us and dashed off Balakirev's Islamey in recital. At Naxos, she is the resident firebrand, taking on such projects as the Boulez Sonatas and Stravinsky's virtuoso transcription of his Firebird.

Biret's CD of the first two books of Ligeti Etudes has drawn the ire of some as the pianist has refused to follow the composer's suggested timings, arguing that musical impact may be lessened if one is obsessed with staying in the fast lane.

While she can't compete with the floating enchantment of Pierre-Laurent Aimard's definitive Sony recording, Biret's forthright style serves the music well in the Bartokian jests of Touches bloquees and she spins a suitably Debussian wash over Arc-en-ciel. As a bonus, she also includes the fiendish player-piano version of the final Coloana fara sfarsit.

And at a mere $14.99 each, both albums are, frankly, a steal.

* Vaughan Williams, Orchestral Favourites (Naxos 8.555867); Ligeti, Etudes Books I and II (Naxos 8.555777)