This is the performance of "The Lark Ascending" played by me on pipe organ and a friend/coworker of mine on violin. The original arrangement of this piece is for piano and violin however the most famous arrangement is for solo violin and orchestra. This is one of my favorite pieces ever written and it was a joy to perform it, which we did a day after this recording. Recording organ is always difficult and this particular organ was not in the best shape. I did the recording as well. The wind machine was noisy and is very audible in the recording, as well as the mechanisms. Some of the pipes were a bit out of tune, and overall it's difficult to find a microphone positioning setup that catches all the thousands of pipes evenly. Enjoy!

Program Notes:
In The Lark Ascending, Vaughan Williams found inspiration not only in English folk themes but in a poem by the English poet George Meredith (1828-1909). The composer included this portion of Meredith's poem on the flyleaf of the published work:

He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.

For singing till his heaven fills,
‘Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows
to lift us with him as he goes.

Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.

Vaughan Williams's orchestral romance offers an impressionistic image of the lark's song and the countryside, with "our valley" represented by two folk tunes. He completed an early version of the piece in 1914 for violinist Marie Hall, who consulted with him on revisions and first performed the work in a violin-piano arrangement in December 1920. The orchestral version premiered in London at a Queen's Hall concert in June, 1921.

The formal structure of the piece is a straightforward ABA development, with each theme introduced and linked by the solo intervals. Yet within that structure, the violin solo is notable for its fluid writing and the organic way in which it emerges from and blends back into the orchestral texture throughout the piece.

The work opens with a calm set of sustained chords from the strings and winds. The violin enters as the lark, with a series of ascending, repeated intervals and nimble, then elongated arpeggios. These rise into the first theme, and the orchestra quietly enters to accompany the solo in the development of this somewhat introspective, folk-like motif. The solo cadenza is reprised