Tippett: The Rose Lake, The Vision Of St. Augustine / C.Davis, M.Tippett, LSO

This Catalyst disc features two relative rarities by Michael Tippett: his The Vision of St. Augustine from 1965 and The Rose Lake from 1995. The former is a cantata for baritone and orchestra setting Augustine's ecstatic vision of time and eternity. The latter is his last orchestral score describing the color and light of a lake under the sun in Africa. This recording of The Vision by Colin Davis and the London Symphony with John Shirley-Quirk dates from 1971 and was only briefly available as an English RCA LP. It was always a problematic performance of a problematic work. Davis is certainly the leading English conductor of his generation who was at the time at the first peak of his career and his abilities, the LSO was then the most virtuosic orchestra in London and Shirley-Quirk was spry and fervent baritone, and they gave everything they had to the performance. Whether they understood the score -- whether anyone could understand the score -- is another question. Tippett's Vision comes from the start of the composer's most abstract and difficult period, when his harmonic language and concept of tempo had evolved into a brilliant but hard style lacking the lyricism of his earlier works. This recording of The Rose Lake by Tippett himself and the London Symphony Orchestra dates from 1997, the year before the long-lived composer left time and entered eternity, and was briefly available on Conifer Classics until that company disappeared in the implosion at the turn of the millennium. It was always a radiant performance of a luminous work. Tippett elicits a performance from the latter-day LSO of elegance and intensity and The Rose Lake shines in the clear light of eternity. The 1971 sound is clear but hard. The 1997 sound is clear and round.