Claire Jones, harp; Classic FM, 2012.
4.25 harps
(Note: recording reviews prior to 2014 were based on a 5-star system.)
She is not just a gigging harpist. For Claire Jones, weddings, parties, and teas are celebrated with panache by the UK’s elitist of the elite. For four years, Claire was the official harpist to His Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales. That meant nearly 200 engagements and state events, as well as numerous private family functions. And the best gig of all was just at the end of her appointment, performing at the most recent royal wedding, welcoming the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to Buckingham Palace. Talk about wanting to be sure it was a good hair day and your shoes matched your dress! But Claire is a beauty, and her generously full tone and languorous style will make us all feel like the privileged classes when we listen to her sumptuous new CD, The Girl with the Golden Harp.
Claire says herself that the disc is about relaxation at the end of a long day. Mostly a repertoire of well-loved favorites, the disc begins with Claire sweetly caressing tone all alone in a come hither-esque “Softly Awakes My Heart” from Camille Saint-Saens’ Samson and Delilah. Soon the orchestra–a pastel-hued English Chamber Orchestra–sneaks in with Debussy’s “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair.” Claire’s newlywed husband, percussionist/composer Chris Marshall, created the arrangements.
If you think playing for William and Kate was romantic, how about looking out on Corcovado in Rio de Janeiro and having the love of your life hand you a piece of music as he asks you to spend the rest of your life with him—and as your heart skips a beat, you see the piece is called “Heartstrings.” Chris Marshall’s new piece is expansive and sentimental. It floats and Claire’s playing gives it wings.
One surprise that took my breath away was the second movement, Andante. A relatively new piece in my own listening repertoire, it is firmly finding its way into Valentine’s Day playlists as one of the most serenely, untroubled romantic works ever written. In this arrangement, it has a new depth and tenderness, and played in a true “walking tempo” there is a feeling of reaching out, a striving that touches any heart that has ever been broken but continues loving anyway.
Claire Jones was one of the first recipients of the Prince of Wales Advanced Study Awards that recognizes her as one of Wales’ most outstanding young talents. She nods to her roots with two delicate Welsh tunes, “Lisa Lan” and “Watching the Wheat.” Claire’s “Song to the Moon” from Dvorak’s opera Rusalka might be the prettiest thing you hear all day. •
