*ELGAR. "Wand of Youth" Suite No. 2, Op. xb. *VAUGHAN WILLIAMS. Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tails. B.B.C. Symphony Orchestra (Sargent). H.M.V. BLPio 19. Fantasia SP: DB9783-4.

It is true that Elgar's Wand of Youth music was written when he was twelve and played by a more or less family orchestra but it was not then in the form in which we hear it to-day—a very adult arrangement calling for the exercise of extreme skill on the part of a full symphony orchestra. The B.B.C. Orchestra is full enough, certainly— fuller at times than the recording engineers could cope with—but prepared, on this occasion, to display its undoubted skill only in selected places. Others are distinctly ragged ; and Sargent doesn't always convince us immediately of his complete sympathy with the music—surely the two tempos of the initial March could merge into each other more readily ? And if the bass trombone is to sound like a Wild Bear at all, shouldn't he do so more at his second opportunity than his first, and not less ? Nobody, admittedly, is helped by recorded quality, which is distinctly rough and harsh, though becoming actively oppressive only in the last number.

The reverse of the disc is in a quite different category. I reviewed the SPs of this Tallis Fantasia last March, and felt able to compare them on equal terms with the fine Anthony Collins LP of the work on Decca LXT2699, reviewed in September, 1952. Now that the Sargent version is transferred to LP, it becomes more successful than ever. The string tone is altogether more spacious than it was, and Sargent's shaping of the work as a whole is made doubly effective. Factually, a tiny uncertainty of pitch just seems to cause a very slight sea-swell in the initial octave D of the strings, and in the final chord ; tentatively, I have more sympathy with Collins's solo strings, ani with the recorded tone of his second orchestra (the distant one), than with Sargent's.

And the Fantasia is now where it should be—on a ten-inch record. Not very sensibly coupled—the two works concerned will not necessarily appeal to the same buyer ; but highly successful in itself, and well worth consideration by anyone not already committed to the equally successful Decca issue. M. M.