To mark the 100th anniversary of the first performance of The Lark Ascending (in Vaughan Williams’s violin/piano arrangement of the orchestral original), I recounted evidence in these pages for the work’s origins (See Dec 2020 issue). An episode in January 1914 seems pivotal – an occasion in Italy when Vaughan Williams heard the playing of the brilliant young British violinist Marie Hall (1884-1956). Hall was on a concert tour; Vaughan Williams was over wintering with wife Adeline at the Italian Riviera resort of Ospedaletti. Apparently, Hall played unaccompanied Bach on this occasion (echoed, perhaps, in The Lark Ascending’s violin cadenzas). The ever-popular work was subsequently written for Hall (just before the First World War) and is dedicated to her.
However, is there a wider narrative to uncover beyond this isolated incident? Curiosity is stirred by the longest of several mentions of this Italian encounter in the press, late in 1928. In reference to a London performance by Hall of , the journal stated that the work
