My contribution to stopping COVID - Pappano, Britten, Vaughan Williams

As my contribution to not spreading COVID, knowingly or unknowingly, I refrained from going to what would otherwise have been a perfect programme for me, Antonio Pappano conducting Britten's Violin Concerto (soloist Vilde Frang, whom I've heard doing this piece before) and Ralph Vaughan Williams Symphony no 6. at the Barbican with the London Symphony Orchestra. But in times like these that's when background counts.  No concert ever exists in limbo. Context matters, absolutely. Pappano's programme is particularly relevant in these times, too, because both pieces deal with almost apocalyptic situations, so bleak that even the power of music cannot articulate.

Britten, like so many others knew all too well what the rise of Hitler meant for Europe. Our Hunting Fathers, his op. 8, was a specific response to the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which dehumanized Jews, gays, intellectuals and "modernists". Indeed there are very specific references embedded in the text.  As a protest against cruelty and madness, Our Hunting Fathers is so powerful that it perhaps says more about listeners still who don't get it.  Franco's victory in Spain, supported by Nazi aeroplanes and strategists intensified that sense of despair.  For many, it was traumatic, as if European civilization was doomed.  Britten's Violin Concerto is a product of that period of intense despair.  The Violin Concerto was never meant to be easy listening. It takes moral courage to write a deeply uncomforting statement like this, and know it might never be understood.  Perhaps this is why it has only relatively recently entered its status in the canon of major works by a composer who thought deeply about society and the human condition.

From a hushed string introduction, the violin rises, against an understated but ominous background of percussion and brass. Despite the lyricism of the violin line, the idea of war lurks, with menace.  Hollow pizzicato suggest agitation.  The second movement has the character of nightmare scherzo, a battery of strings, brass and percussion battling with the violin, which remains detached.The tumult is shaped carefully, bringing out the huge, angular blocks of sound, booming bassoons,  spikey details in the strings, rumbling drums, creating contrast with the violin. In the cadenza, Frang has in the past lit up the dizzying diminuendo : not a defeat so much as a “tactical withdrawal".  In the passacaglia, descending notes from the brass moved in careful procession. Now the violin line is haunted by other strings, mumuring as if heard from afar. Eventually an anthem builds up, the brass no longer against the soloist, but leading forwards.  Tense, brittle figures suggested gunfire, but the violin remains uncowed.  A particularly full-throated tutti section,  almost a chorale, violin and orchestra united in common cause.  From the strings, a suggestion of guitars : the ghosts of the dead in Spain, rising again, led by the violin, marching quietly onward.

Vaughan Williams would not be drawn on what his Symphony no 6 might be "about", but that in itself suggests how difficult it was to express the traumas he'd witnessed.  Of his third symphony, he  explicitly stated that it was "wartime music", inspired by his experiences as a stretcher bearer in France. "It’s not really lambkins frisking at all, as most people take for granted". Thus the sixth has no cosy title to throw the unwary off track. The onus is on the listener to listen sensitively, and understand the piece from within. To hear music as no more than sound is to deny emotion and humanity. Last year, Salonen conducted the introduction so the brass seemed to scream in a communal wail of anguish. The quieter "pastoral" themes on strings, woodwinds and harps felt haunted, swept away in the tumult.  In the second movement tension built up steadily, the three-note ostinato figure at first muffled, the cor anglais offering a moment of contrast before the relentless fusillade of brass and percussion. This  gives context to the saxophone solo in the scherzo, enhancing its strange, alien nature. Its jazziness is seductive, yet it suggests disorder, the breaking-up of safe structural certainties. The bass clarinet served as lament.  The final movement, with its ambiguous pianissimo, suggests not peace, but perhaps a numbness so great that even music cannot fully express. Unlike the third symphony, there's no room even for wordless voice. Muted flutes in unison, rather than the fanfare of brass with which the symphony began.

Voices of 1945 - Salonen, Vaughan Williams, Strauss and Stravinsky

Voices of 1945 at the Royal Festival Hall, with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra in Ralph Vaughan Williams Symphony no 6 (here in the 1950 revision), Richard Strauss Oboe Concerto in D and Igor Stravinsky Symphony in Three Movements. This continues Salonen's long series of programmes that make connections between composers and their responses to the changes in the world around them. This approach is especially important now that music is presented out of context on playlists and short clips.  Programmes like this creates juxtapositions that enhance depths of understanding, even of well known repertoire.  The underlying theme of this concert was war : all three composers reflecting on the impact of war, each in their own different way.

Vaughan Williams would not be drawn on what his Symphony no 6 might be "about", but that in itself intensifies what it might mean. Of his third symphony, he  explicitly stated that it was "wartime music", inspired by his experiences as a stretcher bearer in France. "It’s not really lambkins frisking at all, as most people take for granted". Thus the sixth has no cosy title to throw the unwary off track. The onus is on the listener to listen sensitively, and understand the piece from within. To hear music as no more than sound is to deny emotion and humanity. Salonen conducted the introduction so the brass seemed to scream in a communal wail of anguish. The quieter "pastoral" themes on strings, woodwinds and harps felt haunted, swept away in the tumult.  In the second movement tension built up steadily, the three note ostinato figure at first muffled, the cor anglais offering a moment of contrast before the relentless fusillade of brass and percussion. This  gives context to the saxophone solo in the scherzo, enhancing its strange, alien nature. Its jazziness is seductive, yet it suggests disorder, the breaking-up of safe structural certainties. The bass clarinet served as lament.  The final movement, with its ambiguous pianissimo, suggests not peace, but perhaps a numbness so great that even music cannot fully express. Unlike thethird symphony, there's no room even for wordless voice. Muted flutes in unison, rather than the fanfare of brass with which the symphony began.

Richard Strauss's  Oboe Concerto in D heard here in the 1945 version rather than Strauss's own revision from 1948, with soloist Tom Blomfield, Principal oboe of the Philharmonia. With his typical self-deprecating humour, Strauss dismissed it as "workshop excercises written to prevent the right wrist, freed from the drudgery of wielding the baton from going to sleep, permanently". Perhaps, but like Vaughan Williams, Strauss, who knew all too well about the destruction of German culture, (remember Metamorphosen) didn't want to be drawn into discussion, especially at a time when his homeland was under military occupation.  In any case, the solo part requires tour de force virtuosity, not only in terms of technique but in expressiveness. The first movement is exquisite, its elegance near filigree, an evocation of a more civilized, idealized past.  The timbre of the oboe matters, too : darker than a clarinet, richer yet more bittersweet.  In the final movement, D minor not major, suggests a subtle shift of mood, swiftly swept away by the blazing allegro at the conclusion.

Salonen's long series of Stravinsky concerts with the Philharmoniaa were outstanding. When Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements premiered in 1946 the composer wrote "Each episode is linked in my mind with a concrete impression of war.....the first movement inspired by a war film, a documentary of scorched-earth tactics in China", the second movement by the images of peasants "scratching and digging in their field" and the third "A musical reaction to newsreels I had seen of goose-stepping soldiers. The square march beat, the brass-band instrumentation, the grotesque crescendo in the tuba - all of these are related to those repellent pictures".

Even if he was later quoted (by Robert Craft) denying this, the structure of the symphony reflects turbulence and discord. The Symphony in Three Movements  operates like a kaleidoscope, of multiple aural images, fragmentizing and re-surfacing in new combinations. It's like collage, as used in the cinema where different frames are put together to create impressionistic density, images proliferating in layers and patterns. Stravinsky would have been well aware of Sergei Eisenstein. Hence the many quotes from other works, notably"primitivism" of the Rite of Spring, ritual now a force for sacrifice but not necessarily regrowth, and music planned for use in the film of Franz Werfel's novel The Song of Bernadette  whose visions give her faith, and from Beethoven's Symphony no 3, "Eroica". none of which would have been incorporated without purpose.  The inner movement is brief respite before savage, angular ostinato figues return.  One might, perhaps,  read into the piece insights into Stravinsky's predicament, looking back on his past and anxiously ahead, but the energy of this performance was such that it wholly convinced on its own terms.

Vaughan Williams Symphonies 3 & 4 Martyn Brabbins Hyperion

Latest in the Hyperion series, Ralph Vaughan Williams Symphonies no 3 and 4, with Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, recorded in late 2018 after a series of live performances. Following on from  A Sea Symphony (read more here)  and A London Symphony, this series is proving to be a major contribution to the discography. Vivid, thought-through performances, immensely rewarding.

In this Vaughan Williams Symphony no 3, the introduction to the Molto moderato seems to vibrate as if from within. Deliberately ambiguous textures, constantly shifting and unsettled. Despite the poignant  violin, (which might suggest The Lark Ascending) this is not complacent.  As Vaughan Williams himself wrote, "It’s really wartime music – a great deal of it incubated when I used to go up night after night in the ambulance wagon at Ecoivres and we went up a steep hill and there was wonderful Corot-like landscape in the sunset. It’s not really lambkins frisking at all, as most people take for granted."  The oboe and cor anglais intensify the irony, for these instruments remind us what the fields of France might have been before they became battlegrounds.

The horn solo with which the Lento movement begins further reinforces the battlefield connotations, at once a reveille and and Last Taps. Gradually lines stretch forward, but the landscape is still haunted by the ambiguities of the first movenment , the panorama seen, as it were behind smoke and rain.  The trumpet cadenza, played without valves sounds deliberately hollow, as if blown not quite in tune by an ordinary foot soldier : too much polish would not work. Yet more irony, since it takes considerable skill on the part of a trained professional to achieve such results.  The high, ascendant tessitura suggests gradual change of perspective, upwards into another realm. Does the trumpet here foretell the Last Trumpet at the End of Time ?  In the third movement, bright figures suggest freedom.  They introduce the vigourous, earthy dances of the scherzo, which may or may not signify the music of earlier times with which Vaughan Williams was so familiar. But are these dances bucolic or brutalist ?  This symphony operates on many different levels.

In the final movement, Vaughan Williams employs a human voice, (Elizabeth Watts) albeit one singing ethereal wordless vocalize.  If the trumpet at the end of the second movement signifires the Last Trumpet, the voice here might signify angels, but not neccessarily. Perhaps it’s a reminder that some things are beyond human comprehension and may never be bridged.  Elizabeth Watts' timbre is pure and unworldly, with just enough warmth to suggest some tantalizing form of comfort. Her voice echoes from afar, for distance matters : there is a dividing line between this world and whatever may or may not lie ahead.  The re-entry of the orchestra  brings us back to earth. There are echoes of the dances in the scherzo, of the high string tessituras and wind instruments, now embellished by harp and celeste.  The expansive, searching lines now rise with greater fullness than before, yet recede into near-silence. The voice continues, alone.

Of his Symphony no 4 in F minor, Vaughan Williams told Sir Henry Wood, "I don't like the work itself much but it is undoubtedly a very fine piece". Good music "exists" by its own creative volition : it's not manufactured to preconceived specifications like a consumer product.  As the composer was later to write "I do think it beautiful...because we know that beauty can come from unbeautiful things".
Brabbins shapes the introduction so it seems to explode with fierce but controlled force.  Although this fanfare might seem shocking, it does connect to other aspects of the composer’s work.  At times I was reminded of the figure in the Antiphon in Five Mystical Songs "The Church with psalms must shout....My God and King ". Vaughan Williams, who knew the Bible and Messianic traditions, understood the concept of forces so powerful that they cannot be constrained.  Pounding ostinato, trumpets (again, Biblical significance) ablaze, trombones and tuba add depth.  The theme isn't meant to be soothing. It could reflect the "terrible beauty" from the Book of Job Ch 37, 17-22, though there is nothing religious about this symphony. The references merely serve to indicate that a cataclysm of some sort is being unleashed.

More brass in the second movement, marked andante moderato, but this time more restrained, the strings of the BBCSO murmuring en masse, from which the woodwind line rises, moving ever upwards.  A sense of unease : tense pizzicato creating a fragile though regular beat. The flute melody, exquisitely played, has a poignant quality: painfully alone but unbowed.  Wildness returns with the third movement, brass pounding, trombones creating long zig-zag lines. For a moment the tuba leads a trio with grunting bassoons. The term "scherzo" means "joke" but the humour here is darkly ironic. This colours the sprightly theme which follows : it's not escapist. The swaggering thrust of the first movement returns, angular dissonances flying in all directions, clod-hopping ostinato suggesting grotesque horror.  The Finale is "con epilogo fugato" : no easy resolution, no easy answers.  Given Brabbins' grounding in modern and modern British music, his approach to this symphony is particularly interesting, full of insight and freedom. intuitively executed.

The bonus on this recording is the premiere of Saraband, taken by Brabbins from an unpublished manuscript. This brief cantata, for voice, chorus and orchestra, with David Butt-Philip as soloist, sets lines from Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, describing Helen of Troy. Drafted in 1913-14, but not completed, the work was set aside by other pressures of work. Even in embryo, it's an interesting work which bears the mark of the composer at this fertile stage in his career.

Time and Space : Holst, Vaughan Williams, Mary Bevan, Roderick Williams

Time and Space - songs by Holst and Vaughan Williams, with Mary Bevan, Roderick Williams, William Vann and Jack Liebeck, new from Albion, highlighting the close personal relationship between the two composers. As the label is an offshoot of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society, its choices are eclectic rather than mainstream, but illuminate aspects of Vaughan Williams' life and work which might not otherwise be covered in mass market releases. While Albion's first collection "Heirs and Rebels" presented archive recordings of well known songs by Holst and Vaughan Williams, the choices on this recording places less familiar songs - some unpublished -  by each composer beside each other for comparison and also their settings of the same texts.

Holst's fascination with visionary themes can be glimpsed in "Invocation to Dawn", from Holst's Six Songs Op15 H68 (1902-3). This was the first of his settings of his own translation from Sanskrit.  It's contemporary with his The Mystic Trumpeter (1904 rev. 1912), and works like Savitri Op 25 and the Choral Hymns to the Rig Veda Op. 26 (1908-12). While neither Holst nor RVW were conventionally religious, the ardent vocal line and rolling piano part in this song connects to transcendental themes prevalent in that era.   Holst includes three settings of Thomas Hardy, "In a Wood", "Between Us Now",  and "The Sergeant's Song", which text Vaughan Williams also used in Buonaparty (1908), which can be heard on the recent "The Song of Love" album, also from Albion. (Please read my review here). Holst's version is animated, more attuned to the irreverent satire in the poem, with Roderick Williams at his idiomatic best.  The suppressed passion in "I will not let thee go", to a poem by Robert Bridges might remind some of Vaughan Williams’ Silent Noon, from 1904, though Silent Noon is by far the masterpiece.

A E Housman verses inspired Vaughan Williams On Wenlock Edge (1909), and also Along the Field (1925-7). These songs, set for high voice and solo violin (Mary Bevan and Jack Liebeck) are exquisite studies in minor key modality, so refined that they seem to hover in  mystical trance.  In "We'll to the Woods No More", the vocal line stretches, with seemingly little dynamic variation,  mirrored by the violin.  But perhaps that is the point : the mood is so elusive that the song floats away, like a ghost.  "Along the Field" develops the mystery. The plaintive vocal line suggests  plainchant, or possibly vespers, for the lovers will soon be parted by death. The leaves of the aspen tree know what lies ahead but cannot  speak. "And I spell nothing in their stir" sings Bevan with hushed deliberation. Even the relatively cheerful "In the Morning" is melancholy, and "The Sigh that Heaves the Grasses" drips with portent.  The violin part in "Good-Bye" is subtly discordant, picking up on the unspoken emotions of the lad so abruptly dismissed by the object of his affections.  The text of "Fancy's Knell" resembles "Clun" from On Wenlock Edge, though the wordier scansion of this poem doesn't invite quite such a strong setting. The set ends with "With Rue my Heart is Laden", also set by George Butterworth, Vaughan Williams' version even more aphoristic and enigmatic. Although these songs are usually heard with tenor, the silvery timbre of Bevan's voice, in my opinion, enhances their strange, surreal magic. This perfomance is so beautiful that it makes this recording an absolute must.

Two settings of A Cradle Song to a text by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one by Vaughan Williams from 1905, the other By Holst from his Op.16 H6 (1903-5) contrast with Vaughan Williams' Blake's Cradle Song (1928) , the composer responding to the greater complexity of Blake's poem. Holst's Four Songs Op.14, H14 (1896-98)  are fairly early works, setting poems by Charles Kingsley, Henrik Ibsen and Heinrich Heine (both in English translation) and Robert Bridges.

Vaughan Williams' Bushes and Briars (1908), introduces the group of folk songs in this collection. Bushes and Briars is seminally important, since it was the first song the composer collected in the field, having heard it sung by a labourer in Essex in 1903. It's been performed hundreds of times in many forms, including by modern urban "folk", but here Roderick Williams brings out the sophistication of Vaughan Williams' transcription. The first verse is unaccompanied, as traditional ballad usually was, but the piano part develops it as art song, warmed by the natural sincerity of Williams' style. A memorable performance.  Vaughan Williams collected The Lark in the Morning (1908) in Essex, expurgating more ribald aspects of the original.  The Captain's Apprentice (1908) from a fishing community in Kings Lynn, was adapted into the Norfolk Rhapsody, on which the composer was working at that period.

Holst made sixteen arrangements of folk songs, two of which we have here, The Willow Tree (H83/6 1906-8), and Abroad as I was walking (H83/1). Holst's Four Songs for Voice and Violin (Op. 35,  H132, 1916-17)  display a more "modern" sensibility. There are no time signatures."Bar lines are used for coordination purposes, but the length of each bar varies freely according to the melodic line", as stated in the uncredited programme notes.  Two settings of Walt Whitman's texts from Whispers of Heavenly Death form the basis of the songs Darest Thou Now O Soul. Holst's version H72, 1904-5) is declamatory, delivered here with dramatic flair by Roderick Williams.  Vaughan Williams' version, which he was working on at the same period, incorporating the text into A Sea Symphony. Here it is heard in a setting for solo voice and piano, from 1925. The unison version for voices and string orchestra - a hymn with chamber orchestra - can be heard on Martyn Brabbins' recent recording of A Sea Symphony. (Please read more about that here).

Vaughan Williams : The Song of Love, Albion, Roderick Williams, Kitty Whately

From Albion, The Song of Love featuring songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams, with Kitty Whately, Roderick Williams and pianist William Vann.  Albion is unique, treasured by Vaughan Williams devotees for rarely heard repertoire from the composer's vast output, so don't expect mass market commerical product.  Albion recordings often highlight new perspectives. This  release includes the famous The House of Life, with Kitty Whately, a mezzo-soprano, and songs in German and French, with Roderick Williams, probably the pre-eminent interpreter of English song.

Though the full cycle of The House of Life is now nearly always heard with male voice, even with bass-baritones, the premiere was given at the Wigmore Hall on 2nd December 1904, in the presence of Vaughan Williams himself, with Edith Clegg, a contralto, accompanied by Hamilton Harty. Some of the songs, to sonnets by Dante Gabriel Rossetti,  have texts that suggest a man addressing a woman, such as Love's Minstrels and Heart's Haven, but the others four are gender-neutral. Indeed, Silent Noon, one of the best loved of all Vaughan Williams' songs, lends itself particularly well to the female voice. The warmth in Whately's timbre enhances the image of high summer langour, where "hands lie open in the long fresh grass", the piano gently palpitating.  Whately breathes tenderness into the phrase "All round our nest, far as the eye can pass, are golden kingcups fields with silver edge"  One can almost feel the vista, and endless horizons.  But the "visible silence, still as the hourglass" cannot last. "Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly hangs ......" Dragonflies die, their splendour brief and doomed. Whately's voice seems to hover, making the passionate final declartion ever more poignant. "O! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower". The final phrase "the song of love" (hence the album title) can be a little too high for some male voices, but poses no problems for a mezzo-soprano. Though the cycle is The House of Life, the texts deal with Death, often as a strange visitor, as in Death-in-Life, but the overall impact, given the understatement of Vaughan Williams' settings, suggests that happiness, and life, must be cherished while it lasts.

In the Three Old German Songs (1902) Vaughan Williams explored medieval German song, capturing an archaic nature rather different from folk song, German or English.  The setting of To Daffodils on this set comes from a manuscript found at Gunby Hall, which the composer visited regularly. This differs from the 1895 setting of Robert Herrick's poem in that the short lines ebb and flow from quietness to climax, much like Vaughan Williams' Orpheus and His Lute (1903),.  In the Four French Songs, from 1903-4, Vaughan Williams sets medieval French song, Quant li Louseignolz, for example rather than "Quand le Rossignol", a song with connections to knights who took part in the Crusades. Thus the studied "medieval" formality. Roderick Williams has no peer in English song, though his French is less idiomatic, but he's a natural communicator. Here, his delivery brings out the special qualities in these songs, with their stylized formality, very different from folk song and indeed from later French song. There may well be a connection between these songs and Love's Minstrels in The House of Life, with its "modern" take on medievalism.

With Buonaparty (1908) Roderick Willliams is back on home ground, his delivery animated, crackling with character. This is one of Vaughan Williams’ only two settings of Thomas Hardy's poems though, as we know from his Symphony no 9, he knew Hardy's Tess of the d'Ubervilles and the evocations of Wiltshire and Wessex.  Perhaps the composer didn't warm to Hardy's other values. Gerald Finzi, who did understand Hardy's irony and lack of deference, set more Hardy than anyone else. Finzi's setting of Hardy's Rollicum-Rorum quite explicitly satirizes populist war mongering.  Roderick Williams' Finzi settings of Hardy are essential listening, not only for the dynamism of his performances, but for what he reveals of Finzi's feel for Hardy as iconoclast.  RVW's Buonaparty was intended though not used for Hugh the Drover. It's robust, with a jolly refrain, but not specially perceptive.

With The Willow Song (1897), followed by Three Songs from Shakespeare (1925), Kitty Whately sings some of Vaughan Williams’ settings of Shakespeare. This version of Orpheus and His Lute is  almost neo-classical, its refinement more subtle than the better known earlier version.  With The Spanish Ladies (1912) and The Turtle Dove (1919-1934), Roderick Williams returns to classic Vaughan Williams, the first based on a sea shanty, the second on an old ballad collected by the composer from a traditional singer's performance at the Plough Inn, in Sussex in 1904 . These set the context for Two poems by Seumas O'Sullivan,The Twilight People (1905) and A Piper (1908)  published in 1925, when the composer was working on Riders to the Sea. O'Sullivan was the pen name of James Sullivan Starkey, a Dublin journalist. The plaintive lines may reflect Vaughan Williams' knowledge of Ireland, through the prism of W B Yeats and J M Synge.  Whately and Williams conclude with two duets based on German folk songs, in English translation, Think of me and Adieu.  Though Albion recordings cater to a very specialized market, this set is very well planned and performed : a good introduction for those wanting to delve deeper into Ralph Vaughan Williams and the sources of his inspiration.

British Tone Poems vol 2 - Bliss, Fogg, Howell, and more

British Tone Poems Volume 2 from Chandos with Rumon Gamba conducting then BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.  The first volume (please seee my review HERE) focussed on some major discoveries, like Ivor Gurney's A Gloucestershire Rhapsody. There are treasures to be found in this set, too, such as Eric Fogg's Merok, Arthur Bliss' Mêlée fantastique,  Patrick Hadley's Kinder Scout and Dorothy Howell's Lamia.  

Eric Fogg (1903-1939) was a youthful prodigy, so well regarded that the British Music Society presented 25 of his works in concert when he was just seventeen. Merok (1929, published 1934) proved so popular that it was heard at the Proms several times during his lifetime.  Fogg died young, in circumstances still unclear. Merok is a town at the head of the Gieranger Fjord in Norway.  Rustling strings introduce a simple, melody, defined by oboe. This melody is taken up by flute, then violin, then cor anglais, and oboe once again, each variation flowing lyrically with graceful eddies, before a mysterious, hushed coda. Once more the oboe sings, its timbre now graver and more mysterious. The initial inspiration might have been landscape, but the effect is magical, almost hypnotic. It feels timeless, as eternal and impenetrable as the cliffs and forests looming above the fjord.  Vernon Hadley recorded Fogg's Merok in 2005, but this superlative performance by Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic should put it firmly back on the map. 
Patrick Hadley (1899-1973) was a Cambridge academic, but his Kinder Scout (1923) evokes the Dark Peak,  the highest point in the Peak District, rising above the moors, which affords panoramic views as far as Manchester and Snowdonia, when visibility is good.  Long string lines stretch, setting context for a theme on cor anglais. The probing strings repeat, suggesting endless vistas. A surge wells up in the orchesta, heralded by horns. At the conclusion, a solo violin, leading the strings to soar upward.  Perhaps Hadley's Kinder Scout was influenced by Delius's A Song of the High Hills, which Hadley knew well, though, being the work of a very young man it is far less ambitious. It's moving, nonetheless, and a finely-honed miniature. 

Dorothy Howell (1898-1982)'s Lamia (1918) was premiered at the Proms by Sir Henry Wood in 1919, and repeated several times, as recently as August 2019, conducted by Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.  In the poem by John Keats, Lamia is a siren, half woman, half serpent, who lives in the ocean.  She falls in love with a mortal, and he with her, but their love is doomed.  The "maritime" character of Lamia is described in swelling lines, which surge and retreat like the tides. There are erotic undertones, too, vide Tristan und Isolde. Sparkling figures - Lamia playing on the waves ? - give way to murkier undercurrents. The second section is more turbulent, underlined by dramatic brass and rumbling percussion.  Then an interlude of delicately scored reverie, winds singing above hushed strings, a brief respite before the full orchestra surges once again - very high timbres in the strings and winds, before a poignant diminuendo, where a violin plays, alone. The pace picks up, drawing together different threads - elusive figures, surging lines, stronger cross currents - before dissipating into gloom, from which the violin plaintively calls.

Fogg, Hadley and Howell were all young when they wrote their respective pieces heard here.  Hadlery went on to write other works such as the cantata The Hills (1934), but Fogg died early and Howells retired from composing.  Given this context, the inclusion of  very early work by Ralph Vaughan Williams gives perspective. Harnham Down, the second of Three Impressions for Orchestra, dates from 1904, but was later withdrawn, receiving its first recording only in 2013, through the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society's specialist label, Albion. As Lewis Foreman notes, this piece contains "the composer's fingerprints, already reecognisable : the spacing of the string orchestras in its earlier   entry, the woodwind solos and the poetuc fade-out at the end".  It's also relevant that  the score was prefaced by a stanza from Mathew Arnold  which would be referred to in An Oxford Elegy, and that the evocation of Wiltshire would find fruit in Vaughan Williams' Symphony no 9.

Also on this recording are three other short tone poems : John Foulds' April-England  Op 48 no 1 (1920, orch. 1932), Eugene Goossens By the Tarn Op 15/1 (1916)  and Frederic Hymen Cowen's Rêverie (1903), but the set concludes with Arthur Bliss Mêlée fantastique (1921, rev. 1937) . In his youth, Bliss was avant garde, responding to the creative liberation of the 1920's and to developments in European music. Please see my article Things to Come - Arthur Bliss and Futurism. The influence of Stravinsky is clear in the rhythmic daring and pounding staccato. This is music meant to be danced to, its energetic verve feels "physical", as if crying to be choreographed. Each section is brief, yet distinctive, as in a ballet, the larger tutti segments suggesting a corps of figures leaping and running. Fanfares and exuberance, contrast with swirling strings.  Low timbred brass and winds introduce darker textures, cut short by forceful single strokes on timpani.  Bliss wrote Mêlée fantastique in memory of his friend Claude Lovat Fisher, a painter and theatre designer, influenced by designers like Leon Bakst and the clean lines of modernism, who died young, hence perhaps the terse ending.  Vivid performances all round from Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic.Orchestra, very much in the innovative spirit of these works from the years of change, around and after the Great War. 

Vaughan Williams Symphonies 7 "Antartica" & 9 : Manze, RLPO

Andrew Manze's  Ralph Vaughan Willims series with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra with Onyx continues with Symphony no 7 "Antartica" and Symphony no 9.  Manze 's Antartica includes short superscriptions (spoken by Timothy West) before each section, though the composer had meant them to be read silently.  This may drive some apoplectic with rage, but this is nothing new.  In 1954, Sir Adrian Boult set a precedent, employing Sir John Gielgud.  Though Vaughan Williams  had not intended to have the quotations spoken aloud in performance, he went along with Boult's decision.  Some years later, André Previn followed suit, with Sir Ralph Richardson.  It is also highly relevant that the symphony was created in the years after the film Scott of the Antarctic (1948), starring John Mills, and James Robertson Justice, directed by Charles Frend, for which Vaughan Williams wrote the soundtrack.  It is  worth watching the film (via the British Film Institute), because it is a classic of British cinema at a time when the British film industry was in its heyday.

Scott and his companions struggle against overwhelming forces. They are alone, on a vast continent, at the mercy of forces beyond their control.  Long sequences are shot without dialogue, focussing on the vast, empty landscape as expressed through the music as if  Nature itself  had been given voice. The colours are muted : the whiteness of snow, the darkness of night, intensifying the bleakness. The characters are loosely sketched, and Scott's team of dogs feature frequently.. In ths vast landscape, mortals count for very little.  Effectively the film "is" music, a tone poem with visuals and occasional moments of speech.  The sky will not fall if the symphony is heard with text,  since there are other opportunities to hear the purely orchestral version, and it does us good to remember that without the film, the symphony might not exist.  In any case, if a listener cannot focus on the music, the fault lies with the listener, since this is mighty fine music indeed.

A well-paced Prelude, the pulse suggesting a slow, purposeful trek in difficult terrain. The orchestra wells up, at once ominous and majestic, spotlit by cymbals before proceeding again: The soprano (Rowan Pierce) heads the wordless chorus, eerily enticing the strugglers forward. In the strings and percussion, there are evocations of winds and swirling snow. In the austere later sections, textures open out, suggesting open horizons: trumpets calling forth as the movement enters a final, expansive crescendo.  In "Landscape", the lento movement, Manze's textures are lean, emphasizing the contrast that is to come when the organ enters,  ("Ye ice falls !"), a baleful reminder of what the explorers are up against.  As the sounds fade, the Intermezzo is introduced by a short sentence. In the Epilogue the value of quotation proves itself. Scott is dead,  forced into silence, but his words live on.  "I do not regret this journey; we took risks, we knew we took them, things have come out against us, therefore we have no cause for complaint."  One could blank these words out, but to ignore them would diminish emotional impact.

Vaughan Williams's final symphony, Symphony no 9,  receives an almost elegaic reading from Manze which brings out the darker undercurrents beneath the surface associations with Hardy and Wessex. Tess of the d'Urbervilles wasn't pastoral romance, but tragedy.  Against the darkness of this performance, the clarinet and violin sound clean and poignant. In the scherzo, the saxophone trio are appropriately jarring and discordant : the "joke" here is malevolent.  The Finale isn't tranquil so much as suppressed.  

Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony - Andrew Manze RLPO

Andrew Manze Ralph Vaughan Williams series with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and choir for Onyx continues with A Sea Symphony (soloists Sarah Fox and Mark Stone) and The Lark Ascending (soloist James Ehnes).  Previous releases (Symphonies 2 and 8 in 2016,  3 and 4 in 2017, and 5 & 6 earlier in 2018) should leave listeners in no doubt that this is a significant series. Here we start at the beginning, with what is effectively the first symphony, premiered in 1910.  Given that Martyn Brabbins recorded A Sea Symphony with the BBC Symphony Orchestra for Hyperion recently, (please read more here) one might ask whether one should choose between the two. But such comparisons are meaningless: simple either/or judgements don't develop listening skills.  Every good performance has something of merit, whatever the pros or con.  Manze has by far the stronger soloists, though on balance, Brabbins offers more in terms of orchestra and chorus. We need them both. Be glad that we live in an age where we get variety !

If this A Sea Symphony doesn't begin with quite the dramatic spectacle it might, though the timpani roll and trumpets blaze, Manze compensates by emphasizing the undercurrents : the strings surge, suggesting the undertow from which the sprightly woodwinds emerge. This highlights the  "A Song for All Seas, All Ships". Mark Stone's rich deep baritone rings out. A truly vigorous  "Today a brief rude recitative" : the sailor here is a distinctive individual with the confidence to confront whatever may lie ahead, particularly appropriate in the context of the composer's career at that point.   Stone  captures the shanty rhythm in the line "a chant for the sailors of all nations, Fitful, like a surge".  This creates contrast with the soprano (Sarah Fox) and her more esoteric text, and the refined choral section that follows, so when the baritone returns, the chorale-like structure in the movement is revealed. If anything, Stone is even more impressive in the second movement, "On the beach, at night, alone" where subtle nuance is of the essence. Manze's restraint in the second movement throws the Scherzo into high relief : pounding figures, wild, scurrying lines, swirling strings . While Brabbins brings out the colours of Debussy and Ravel in Vaughan Williams,  Manze is rewarding in the Elgarian moments,  especially in the final movement, The Explorers, which has elements of the transfiguration in The Dream of Gerontius.
 
The first part of the final movement is reverential, but as the pace speeds up, it comes thrillingly to life. "Oh we could wait no longer! " sings Stone. Stone and Fox complement each other : very well-balanced and articulate, harps, winds and violin adding further illumination.  When Stone sings "O soul thou pleasest me", the warmth in  his tone suggests genuine delight.  This is significant, given that the baritone and soprano may represent earthly and spirtual forces at last united in harmony.  Thus the outburst of ecstasy on "O Thou transcendant".  While A Sea Symphony is secular, it may stem from traditions older and deeper than the poetry of Walt Whitman.  One wonders what Vaughan Williams might have done with Solomon's Song of Songs as a work for solo voices.

Combining A Sea Symphony and The Lark Ascending on one disc makes musical sense, the violin (soloist James Ehnes) taking up where the violin left off in A Sea Symphony.  In marketing terms, the sheer popularity of The Lark Ascending would  be persuasive, especially for those relatively new to the works.Brabbins’s   pairing of A Sea Symphony with the more unusual  Darest thou now, O soul, will appeal to listeners with more advanced musical interests.  Though The Lark Ascending is so beautiful that it's almost impossible to spoil, truly exceptional performances are not that easy to come by.  Ehnes, Manze and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra give a very good and satisying account.

Internal Landscapes : Bax, Vaughan Williams - Brabbins, BBCSO

Martyn Brabbins conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra. at the Barbican in Ralph Vaughan Williams Symphony no 4 and Arnold Bax November Woods   A good combination which had the potential to yield  interesting insights in musical terms. So why does BBC Radio 3 management need to market this as "Remembering World War I" ? Neither piece has  anything to do with war.  Alas, BBC R3 seems hell bent on prioritizing non-musical agendas over music, to meet non-musical targets. Long term, this policy of dumbing down destroys real musical understanding. Better to treat audiences as adults who aren't afraid to think or listen.

Both Vaughan Williams's Fourth Symphony and Bax's November Woods are explorations of ideas that aren't so easy to put in prose : "internal landscapes" so to speak, that find expression in sounds and musical form.  November Woods (1917) isn't about forests per se but forests as metaphors for emotion    It's worth quoting Bax's (non-symphonic) poem Amersham, as the programme book does :

Storm, a mad painter's brush, swept sky and land
with burning signs of beauty and despair
And once rain scourged through shrivelling wood and brake,
And in our hearts tears stung, and the old ache
Was more than any God would have us bear. 

Here the musical forces were in the fore, the orchestra voicing whatever inner storm Bax might have sought to address. The introduction seems to surge and strain, driven by fast-flowing strings, lit by flashes of woodwinds and harp, darkened by violas, celli, oboe and bassoons.  A theme energes, first from cor anglais, then more boldly by horn and then oboe and cello : a duality which could suggest many things, but is part of the very conception. Themes cool and warm, creating flux, but there's no easy resolution. The coda was hushed, mysterious, open-ended.  November Woods is much more "modern" than you'd expect, connecting in this sense to other works of the period.

photo : Jules Barbieri

Ralph Vaughan Williams's Symphony no 4 in F minor (1931-4) received an astonishing performance from Brabbins and the BBCSO. In the Barbican Hall, the impact was spectacular. Though BBC broadcasts are usually good, on air this one was lifeless, giving no sense of occasion.  "I don't like the work itself much",  RVW told Sir Henry Wood, but it is undoubtedly a very fine piece. Good music "exists" by its own creative volition : it's not manufactured to preconceived specifications like a consumer product.  As the composer was later to write "I do think it beautiful...because we know that beauty can come from unbeautiful things".  The introduction on this occasion exploded with extreme but controlled force. Although this fanfare is shocking, it does connect to other aspects of the composer’s work.  At times I was reminded of the figure in the Antiphon in Five Mystical Songs which is relevant, since "The Church with psalms must shout....My God and King ". Vaughan Williams, who knew the Bible and Messianic traditions, understood the concept of forces so powerful that they cannot be constrained.  Pounding ostinato, trumpets (with Biblical signifigance) ablaze, trombones and tuba adding depth.  The theme isn't meant to be soothing. It could reflect the "terrible beauty" from the Book of Job Ch 37, 17-22, though there is nothing religious about this symphony. The references merely serve to indicate that a cataclysm of some sort is being unleashed : no other connotations.

More brass in the second movement, marked andante moderato, but this time more restrained, the strings of the BBCSO murmuring en masse, from which the woodwind line rose, moving ever upwards.  A sense of unease : tense pizzicato creating a fragile though regular beat. The flute melody, exquisitely played, had a poignant quality: painfully alone but unbowed.  Wildness returned with the third movement, brass pounding, trombones creating long zig-zag lines. For a moment the tuba leads a trio with grunting bassoons. The term "scherzo" means "joke" but the humour here is darkly ironic. This colours the sprightly theme which follows : it's not escapist.  With the figure I called "My God and King" the overwhelming thrust of the first movement returns, angular dissonances flying in all directions, clod-hopping ostinato suggesting grotesque horror. Again, no resolution, no easy answers. Perhaps we can guess why RVW dedicated it to Bax.

The contrast with the intensity and sheer musical quality of Vaughan Williams's symphony put Cheryl Frances-Hoad's Last Man Standing into place.  This is a big work, running as long as the symphony, and was served up with lighting effects, props and a shower of objects which might be poppies, and co-ordinated dresses for composer and text writer.  The piece was specially commissioned to mark the 1914-1918 war.  But there is a lot more to war than pretty images.  Much of the problem lies in the text, 15 verses on aspects of life in the trenches, by Tamsin Collison.  Frances-Coad's setting illustrates well but is more sound effects than music.  Entertaining enough, and certainly not mentally or emotionally challenging. But war is not entertainment. and never should be trivialized.  We know, or should by now know, what it was like in the trenches, but no sign here of any reflection or personal insight.  The baritone soloist, Marcus Farnsworth, did his best, as did the orchestra, but this piece bore all the signs of music-made-to-order.  Millions died and suffered in the Great War, which re-shaped the whole world.  To what avail ? 

The Amazing Adventures of Leopold Stokowski

Stokowski and Vaughan Williams, 1956

Time to appreciate Leopold Stokowski, whose many merits are obscured by negative reactions to his flamboyant showmanship, his exaggerated Slavic accent and his willingness to have fun with music, making zany transcriptions and appearing with Mickey Mouse in Fantasia.  Toscaninni, no slouch himself at self-promotion, might have been sniffy, but rivalry sometimes plays a part in assessments.  I like Stokowski's transcriptions - at least he was honest, as opposed to conducting his own take on things.  And what's wrong with bringing millions of kids, all over the world, to classical music via Disney ?  At the moment, I am on a Stokowski listening kick, impressed by his dedication to music.  

The name "Leopold Stokowski" was absolutely authentic.  He was registered at birth as "Leopold Anthony Stokowski" in the district of All Souls in Marylebone in 1882,  His father was Kopernick Leopold Boleslaw Stokowski, a cabinet maker, and his mother, Anne Marie Moore,  was born in Northampton.  They seem to have been Church of England. Leopold was a choirboy and, after studying at the Royal College of Music, worked as an assistant to Sir Henry Wolford Davies at the Temple Church in the City.  In 1905, he moved to the US but didn't really lose his English roots, conducting more British repertoire than one might assume. He conducted Elgar's Symphony no 2 in Cincinatti in November 1911 - just six months after its premiere in London, conducted by the composer himself.  New music, hot off the press ! He also conducted the Enigma Variations, and Holst's The Planets, also new at the time, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Walton's Belshazzar's Feast only three years after its UK premiere, when Walton still had the reputation of being avant garde.  All his liife, Stokowski was open-minded, and alert to what was interesting in musical terms, regardless of whether it was popular.   He was instrumental in bringing Charles Ives to prominence, conducting Ives's Symphony no 4, then considered unperformable, even by the composer himself.  He even arranged a nationwide broadcast . Imagine that happening on TV these days, in our supposedly enlghtened times when "intellectual" and  "creative"  are terms of abuse.  Later, his protégé, José Serebrier, recorded the piece in London, using Stokowski's principles of orchestral preparation.  Please read more HERE about the relationship between Stokowski and Serebrier, which endured until Stokowski's death. Just the account of how they met is fascinating. In many ways, Serebrier continues Stokowski's legacy, and desrevs similar respect.

At some stage, possibly under the influence of his first wife, the pianist Olga Samaroff, Stokowski adopted a "slavic" persona.  Samaroff was in fact born Lucy Hildenlooper in Texas, but in those days having an exotic background helped create careers. Whether real Russian or Polish people could see through the pretence didn't matter.  Nowadays such things would trigger counter-terrorist and money laundering systems.  By 1940, however, Stokowski was well established and able to tell the US census that he was British born, though he shaved five years off his true age.  Eventually, he moved back to Britain five years before his death aged 95. He's buried in East Finchley. 

Throughout his life, Stokowski remained interested in music that was innovative and stretched the mind.   Like so many other musicians - Debussy, Stravinsky, Benjamin Britten, Messiaen - he wa fascinated by non-western form and travelled to Asia in 1927-8.  He spoke coherently about Asian music and conducted Aaron Avshalamov's Hutungs of Beijing (1931) in 1935, presumably having met the composer.  Although the piece describes cluster housing in old Beijing, it's not a cultural hybrid but western music with oriental spice, delightful, but not authentic.  About 25 years ago recordings were made of Avshalamov's major works, which I received from a friend who was a neighbour of the composer who returned to the US in 1947.  Much more adventurously, Stokowski conducted the work of Hidemaro Konoye (1898-1973). Konoye was a bona fide Prince, a scion of the Fujiwara Clan, which goes back 1500 years and is closely associated with the Imperial Household. His brother was Prime Minister of Japan.  Konoye trained in Europe, studying with Franz Schreker, Karl Muck and Erich Kleiber. He was a friend of Wilhelm Furtwängler and Richard Strauss, he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic and founded the New Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo (now the famous NHK Symphony).  They made the first ever recording of Mahler's Symphony no 4 in 1930, one of the first to use the then new electric technology.So much for the idea that Mahler was unknown til the 1960's.  Stokowski conducted Konoye's Etenraku (1931) three times in 1935 with the Philadelphia Orchestra. What the audience and orchestra made of it, I don't know, as it is genuine gagaku music, orchestrated for western instruments. Gagaku was an aristocratic genre, heard mainly in court circles, never "populist".  But it is a fascinating piece, listen to a clip HERE, conducted not by Stokowski but by Ryusuke Numajiri. who's probably more idiomatic. Perhaps Stokowski knew Konoye who was extremely well connected. Stokowski conducted in Japan several times during Konoye's lifetime. Konoye, incidentally, was arrested and imprisoned by the US when he was leading a group of Japanese musicians back to Japan after the war, which they'd spent in Germany. Technically "enemy" though they weren't involved in atrocities.

Earth and Sky - Vaughan Williams Choral Songs - Albion

From Albion Records, which specializes in Vaughan Williams, Earth & Sky, a collection of choral songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams.  Over the years, Albion has produced, in connection with the Vaughan Williams Trust,  numerous collections of rarely heard works by Vaughan Williams, revealing the prodigious extent and variety in his music.  Most of the pieces in this set are original works, but others are settings of traditional songs. This is your chance to hear RVW's 1921 take on Way Down on the Swanee River (Old Folks at home)! Vaughan Williams adapts Stephen Foster's original text, creating a setting for unaccompanied male voices which emphasises the harmonic flow of voices.  Gone are the connotations of sentimentalized slavery, particularly in this performance, which rings with the very English diction of members of the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, directed by William Vann, who doubles as pianist.  Also in this group of folk settings is The Jolly Ploughboy which Vaughan Williams collected in Sussex in 1904, and would in 1949 adapt further in the cantata Folk Songs of the Four Seasons. The choppy rhythms of  The World It Went Well With Me Then (1934) and Tobacco's but an Indian Weed (1934) have a round-like character.  The latter song was originally based loosely on a text from 1699 when smoking was a novelty. Vaughan Williams' setting develops  harmonies which quiver, like rising smoke.  "The vapour's gone, man's life is done : Think of this when you smoke tobacco". Not so much a health warning before its time (1934) but meditation on the transcience of life, and thus very much in the hymn tradition.

 

Eight settings of Vaughan Williams' songs accompnaied by organ (Hugh Rowlands)  demonstrate the composer's background as the editor of the English Hymnal and organist. Five of these songs, though not written as  a unit, form a coherent group in this collection.  A Hymn to Freedom (December 1939) is a unison song, while England my England (1941) is scored for baritone  (Angus McPhee) and organ, the choir offering support and extra texture. The text is by W E Henley, whose poems George Butterworth set in Love Blows As the Wind Blows.  Henley died in 1903, before the First World War and the aggressive jingoism that was popular at that time, which Vaughan Williams, a pacifist, did not share.   The song "celebrates not Britain, nor yet its Empire but a heroic, altogether mythical England", as the booklet notes explain "Spouse-in-chief of the ancient sword".  The Airman's Hymn (1942) was rejected by Westminster Abbey on the grounds that there were no similar settings for the Army or Navy, which is a pity, since the song for mixed voices is lyrical rather than militarist, evoking the freedom of the skies.  "Old hearts are young again, young hearts keep high when we remember you, men of the sky".  Similarly this arrangement of  Land of Our Birth (1944) , employs the voices of children, giving the setting a youthful freshness.

Three Vocal Valses from the Songs of the Wrens (1896) is very early Vaughan Williams,  but is of interest because it shows where the composer was at at this time in his career.   The Songs of the Wrens  was a cycle of twelve poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson,  set by Arthur Sullivan in an attempt to write an English equivalent of the song cycles of Schubert and Schumann.   Though Vaughan Williams created the pieces for voice and piano, he specified SATB as opposed to solo voice, as if to distance them from Lieder. Though Schubert, Schumann and Brahms had also written part-song with piano accompaniment, Vaughan Williams' settings are closer to contemporary Victorian song than to European developments.  

Perhaps most charming and unusual are the Three Gaelic Songs (1954) for unaccompanied voices.  Running together at just over 5 minutes, they form a miniature song cycle with exotic, vaguely Gaelic harmonies, the women’s voices ascendent, the tenor doubling either bass or alto. 

Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony - Martyn Brabbins BBCSO

From Hyperion, an excellent new Ralph Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony with Martyn Brabbins conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Symphony Chorus,  Elizabeth Llewellyn and Marcus Farnsworth soloists. This follows on from Brabbins’s highly acclaimed Vaughan Williams Symphony no 2 "London" in the rarely heard 1920 version. Although Brabbins has not hitherto recorded much Vaughan Williams, he is a superlative conductor of British music and of 20th century British music in particular, so the prospect of a new Hyperion series with Brabbins is intriguing.

The brass fanfare sparkles, strong and bright, rather than brassy,  introducing the first line "Behold, the Sea! ". In many ways,  this symphony is a secular hymn to the sea and what it might represent, so the voice parts are integral to meaning. For a moment the orchestra sings on its own but the voices rise upon the crest, chorus and orchestra surging forwards together. A roll of timpani, and again the anthem "Behold the Sea!" repeated wave after wave.  The tide fades, introducing a new theme highlighted by rhythms that suggest shanty song. Hence the interplay between the first soloist and the chorus, "a chant for the sailors of all nations, Fitful, like a surge".  This call and response relationship also suggests sacred song.  The flags flying here include a special one "for the soul of man"......a spiritual woven signal for all nations, emblem of man elate above death, Token of all brave captains and all intrepid sailors and mates". Though the influence of Debussy and Ravel is significant, the Sea Symphony is very much part of the English choral tradition, albeit in very sophisticated form.  After a brief lull, the music surges forth again, underlined by organ. The baritone returns, singing of the "pennant universal", the chorus and soprano repeating the words in concurrence.  Then, as so often in chorale,  the first verse returns, the soprano at first on her own, the theme elaborated by the baritone, chorus and orchestra together.

The second movement is introduced by mysterious low harmonies, setting the mood "On the beach at night alone".  Here, the organ is particularly resonant, the brass and low timbred winds calling out as if in hymnal.  At first the baritone is alone, but gradually joined by small than full chorus.  "All nations, all identities......This vast similitude spans them".  The voices and orchestra repeat the themes, like waves, rising and falling in volume and force.  Beautifully judged orchestral playing, the solo instruments heard clearly, before blending back into the whole, rather like stars in a night sky.   The fanfare in the scherzo movement was more tumultuous than the fanfare at the very start, for it describes the churning of waves "in the wake of the sea-ship after she passes" - wild but not "motley" given the precise definition in the music, which Brabbins kept sharply focused.

If A Sea Symphony is a journey. it is one which proceeds, like many journeys, looking backwards at turns, but ever forward.  Hence the final movement, titled The Explorers, where the ship appears to be taking off into unknown territory.  The scherzo movement operated like a Dies Irae, a monent of judgement clearing the way for a more esoteric future. "After the seas are all cross'd, ........The true son of God shall come singing his songs."  The mood is now altogether more esoteric, the first verse serene yet expansive with long lines that seem to stretch  and search. Shimmering strings echo the voices of the chorus, then joined by brass and winds, and later organ, repeat the harmonies.  After this long choral section, the symphony reaches a new stage. Farnsworth and Llewellyn lead the way ahead "fearlessfor unknown   shores on waves of ecstasy to sail". The solo violin defines yet another stage, with an element of peaceful bliss. Thus we are prepared for the section "O thou transcendent". Farnsworth's voice glows, the relative lightness of his baritone well suited to the luminous imagery in the text. In the finale, the energy and exuberance of the first movemen returns, invigorated "Away ! Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!"  Llewelyn rallies the chorus and the orchestra surges yet again. Sea shanty rhythms are heard again as the "ship" sets forth. The motif "Behold the Sea" is reprised before the very last section, but as the "ship" sails out of sight, silence gradually descends, as if some form of transcendence is achieved.  Brabbins's instinct for structure, honed from years of experience in modern music, pays off handsomely in this last movement, which unfolds with great coherence.  This A Sea Symphony feels like the herald of a new age, as indeed it was, connecting also to other 20th century music of spiritual yearning. 

As a bonus, this recording includes Darest thou now, O soul, a three minute miniature for unison voices and string orchestra, (a hymn with orchestra !) using the same Walt Whitman text which Vaughan Williams used in Towards the Unknown Region.  It is an excellent choice, complementing A Sea Symphony not only in terms of poetic ideas but also taking up the violin line near the end of the symphony.

Clunton and Clunbury, Clungunford and Clun

From A E Housman's On Wenlock Edge, set by Ralph Vaughan Williams, "Clun" the last song, tucked away at the end when all the famous songs are over.  Some don't even notice ! But for me that is the beauty of the quiet, unassuming piece. It's not "about" phsical reality but something beyond this world.

Clunton and Clunbury, Clungunford and Clun,

Are the quietest places Under the sun.

In valleys of springs of rivers, By Ony and Teme and Clun,

The country for easy livers, The quietest under the sun,

We still had sorrows to lighten, One could not be always glad,

And lads knew trouble at Knighton, When I was a Knighton lad.

By bridges that Thames runs under, In London, the town built ill,

'Tis sure small matter for wonder If sorrow is with one still.

And if as a lad grows older The troubles he bears are more,

He carries his griefs on a shoulder That handselled them long before.

Where shall one halt to deliver This luggage I'd lief set down?

Not Thames, not Teme is the river, Nor London nor Knighton the town:

'Tis a long way further than Knighton, A quieter place than Clun, 

Where doomsday may thunder and lighten And little 'twill matter to one.

Vaughan Williams Dona Nobis Pacem - Prom 41 Gardner, Elgar, Boulanger

Prom 41 at the Royal Albert Hall, London, with Edward Gardner conducting the BBCSO in Vaughan Williams' Dona nobis pacem, Elgar's Cello Concerto (Jean-Guihen Queyras) and Lili Boulanger .   Extremely perceptive performances that revealed deep insight, far more profound than the ostensible  "1918" theme   Neither Boulanger nor Elgar had direct experience of war, but, like all decent people with any conscience, they cared about what was happening around them, and could address the human impact of war.

Boulanger's Pour les funerailles d'un soldat is a grave processional, a far more mature piece than the miniatures she is usually represented by on programmes that stress her gender and youth, as opposed to her music.  A steady pace, drum rolls, the tolling of bells and rising frisson in the orchestra enhance the solemn choral backdrop. The strength of  Alexandre Duhamel's delivery added even more gravitas.  At the end, wordless sighs vocalized by the voices of the BBC Symphony Chorus.  This provided context for Elgar's Cello Concerto in G minor op 85 (1918-9) which, in some ways,  is am abstract funeral of sorts.  Jean-Guihen Queyras defined the first theme drawing out the richness, as if to savour it.  Gardner and the BBCSO reiterated the theme with sweeping expansiveness.  Theme and response repeat,  replicating the rising and falling figures which move like processional.  Queyras's tone was beautiful, suggesting the warmth of Elgar's vision, yet also pointedly poignant.  As so often in Elgar, confidence is undercut by an awareness that things do not remain the same forever.  Although Gardner's approach was not as full blooded as, say, Barbirolli, he conducted with refined sensitivity, which worked well with Queyras's sophisticated elegance.  The sudden changes of direction were nicely defined, enhancing the interaction between soloist and orchestra.  Though we've heard Elgar's Cello Concerto so many times, this approach was perfectly valid, and rewarding because it was slightly unusual.  For an encore, Queyras chose Dutilleux, one of the Trois strophes sur le nom de Sacher, a brave choice in a place like the Royal Albert Hall where sensitive playing is usually drowned out.  But Queyras's mastery held the audience spellbound.

But the highlight of Prom 41 was, undoubtedly, Ralph Vaughan Williams' Dona nobis pacem, which Gardner approached with astonishing originality, bringing out the power in the message. Perhaps in modern times, we can better appreciate the visceral intensity.  Gardner also drew out the structural cohesion of the piece, and even brought out its cyclic qualities, which are themselves part of meaning.  Beware of over-emphasizing the use of different texts. (Think Elgar Sea Pictures, for example)  What matters is how Vaughan Williams draws together different strands of human experience into an integrated whole.  Sophie Bevan stood in the organ loft, distant but not too distant, a reminder that the organ and its restrained undertones pulse at the heart of this piece.  Bevan floated her lines so they penetrated the vastness of the hall, the exqusite purity of her tone reflected in the winds. Within moments serenity was shattered by savage chords, the pounding of timpani and the call of trumpets.  "Beat! Beat ! Drums" is a Dies Irae in all but name, the lines swirling and whipping like flames, swept by violent forces, the BBC SO and Chorus unleashing fury.

Neal Davies sang the Reconciliation, where the word “beautiful" is repeated, not only by the soloist but by the chorus. Beautiful, because "mine Enemy is dead, a man as divine as myself is dead".  This is the core "anti war" sentiment, refuting the idea that war resolves things: in death, all men are equal. Thus the deliberate phrasing, where Davies parsed the sentence with pauses. "I draw near", he continued, approaching the intimate moment of the kiss, with reverence.  A violin melody singing alone, garlanded, like the soprano was earlier, by hushed chorus.  Thus a brief repeat of the Dona Nobis Pacem, plaintive and austere with a rumble of muffled drums as the Dirge began, its quiet , relentless pace suggesting the cortege described in Walt Whitman's text.  With the four strophes, the chorus burst out defiantly. "I hear the great drums pounding...and every blow of the great convulsive drums strikes me through and through".  This is vintage Vaughan Williams in every way, with its echoes of Symphony no 3,  the tag "pastoral" more ironic than literal.  The text, also Whitman, refers to "two veterans, son and father" who die together, buried in a double grave, statistically an unlikely image in modern warfare, but one which works in metaphysical terms, underlining relentless futility, where one war engenders the next.  No words needed in the orchestral postlude, from which Davies re-emerges as the voice of the Angel of Death; the words "Dona nobis pacem" now appear almost as screams of protest.  The swirling furies of the Dies Irae return, to a text from the Book of Jeremiah."There is no balm in Gilead".

Most dramatic of all was the final section. "O Man, greatly beloved" sang Davies with fulsome affirmation, followed by orchestra and chorus in a series of quotations from the Old Testament. Gardner defined the ebb and flow, intensifying the trajectory: If all things must change, there may be resolutions beyond the grave, and from war.  Thus Dona nobis pacem rang again, clean, pure and bright, Bevan holding the last words so they seemed to vibrate into eternity.
Photos: Roger Thomas
 

Prom 17 - transcendental Parry, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Brabbins

Thunder and lightning above the Royal Albert Hall before Prom 17  with Martyn Brabbins conductingthe BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Hubert Parry, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst.   Parry's Symphony no 5, the Symphonic Fantasia ,doesn't actually have much to do with the First World War, or Englishness for that matter. It's a brilliantly original work,  which should be appreciated on its own musical terms. Parry's place in British music, and European music, deserves far more attention.   The BBC's fixation with non-musical agendas reinforces cliché and shallow thinking to the detriment of the music itself.

Parry's Symphony no 5, the  Symphonic Fantasia, is a brilliantly original work, looking forwards yet built upon Parry's very deep knowledge of his musical antecedents.   In 1883, he had written of Schumann's Symphony no 4 that it "can be felt to represent in its entirety the history of mental and emotional conditions such as may be grouped around one centre.... the conflict of impulses and desires, the different phases of thought and emotion, and the triumph or failure of the different forces which seem to be represented all give the impression of ....being perfectly consistent in their relationship to one another." 

Thus Parry's symphony - for it is a symphony in four movements (allegro, lento, scherzo and moderato) - encompasses infinite variety in tightly structured coherence. The programmatic titles, Stress, Love Play and Now, are in themselves nothing new, but Parry marks the various sub themes and developments not with conventional German or Italian terms, but with words like "brooding", "pity" and "revolt" which allow interpretive freedom.  Its open-ended, free-spirited nature welcomes new performers, inviting them in, rather than imposing on them.  This matters,  since Parry held strong humanistic and ethical views.   Please read my piece on Parry's The Soul's Ransom HERE.  Some teachers teach students what to do, while others teach students how to think for themselves.  Parry was the latter type : more self effacing than the dominant Stanford and in the long term perhaps a greater creative influence on other composers.

Though Parry in this symphony was thinking back to Schumann and Brahms, the innovative nature of this piece harks to Carl Neilsen's Symphony no 2 "The Four Temperaments", and quite possibly more. It's intricate patterns of theme, recapitulation, development and elongation show, says Jeremy Dibble, "a forward looking attitude to modern structural procedures.  For this reason alone it merits a firmer place in the canon of cyclic works, and perhaps more important still it deserves to be more widely recognized as one of the finest and most assured utterances in British symphonic literature".  If anyone can make a case for Parry as a beacon of modern British music, it would be Martyn Brabbins, whose repertoire spans the late 19th and 20th centuries.   This was a powerful performance, very clearly thought through, much more coherent than when Siniasky conducted the piece at the Proms in 2010.  While  Adrian Boult and Matthias Bamert remain invaluable, Brabbins, with his alertness to the sophisticated inventiveness in the piece,  reveals new insights.

Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending is so extraordinary that even though we've heard it a million times, it still has the power to  astonish.  It's so moving that it always works, whatever the performance. Tai Murray, a former BBC New Generation artist, is technically gifted, shaping the long lines with great charm, suggesting the fragility of the lark.  But there is more to this piece than refinement. I would have preferred more emotional engagement, bringing out the heart rending sense of Sehnsucht of really great performances. Perhaps if we hadn't heard this piece so often we might not expect so much, but how could we live without it ?   But the magic of The Lark Ascending worked yet again : the Proms audience went wild with joy.   
 
With Hubert Parry's Hear My Words, ye People (1894) the organ loft lit up. The organist was Adrian Partington,  evidently enjoying the majesty of the Royal Albert Hall organ.   Just as impressive was  the BBC National Chorus of Wales, as focussed and as precise as they were in last week's Mahler Symphony no 8. Please read more about that here.  Though Parry wrote Hear My Words,  ye People for enthusiastic amateurs, with top notch singers like these, the anthems rang out with magnificent conviction.  The soloists were Ashley Riches and Francesca Chiejina.  This isn't an overblown extravaganza, but all the better for that as it shows the intimacy of Parry's style even when writing for choir, organ and (minimal) orchestra.  Gustav Holst's Ode to Death (1919) blends voices and orchestra to create lush textures which suddenly ignite into crescendo.  returning again to ethereal harmonies "Over the treetops I float thee along, over the rising and sinking waves, come lovely and soothing death, come with joy!".  Harps and fine, bell-like tones in the orchestra suggest transcendence.  

In Vaughan Williams's Symphony no 3  the "Pastoral"  winds and bassoons murmured, as dark and impenetrable as smoke, a rather apposite image since the piece was written after RVW's experiences in the trenches, collecting bodies from fields which should have produced crops.  A  violin melody wafted upwards. Like the Lark it ascends, but its ascent seemed haunted. The natural trumpet in the second movement sounded deliberately hollow, like a trumpet blown by an ordinary soldier, perhaps not quite in tune.  A horn repeats the motif : the last Post meets the last Trumpet at the End of Time. What might the robust dances in the scherzo represent ?  Perhaps this is a threnody not only for those killed in the trenches but for an innocence that cannot return.  Francesca Chiejina’s voice materialized from high up in the balcony, which in the Royal Albert Hall is very far away indeed.  This is important because it creates a sense of distance.  Whatever the soprano might signify, the sound should be otherworldly.  That's why the song is mysterious vocalize. I don't even think it's meant to be an angel or anything quite so comforting, but a reminder that there are things  that are beyond human comprehension and distances that can never be bridged. 

But what of this Proms audience  ?  Even in the expensive seats, people were fidgetting, not paying attention, behaving as if they were at home in front of their TVs.  Some walked out, even after Hear My words, ye People and the Ode to Death.  Why weren't they paying attention to serious subjects and seriously good musicianship ?  Therein lies the danger of marketing music as consumer disposable.   Eventually audiences assume that as long as they've paid for something, they don't need to make an effort to put anything of themselves into the equation.   Maybe what we need is marketing that respects the art it is supposed to serve.  [Since writing this, I've heard from people who weren't able to attend because the Prom sold out almost immediately. All the more it's a shame that those who did get tickets didn't care enough about the music. The ones walking out after the choral pieces were cheerfully heading off to the pub. So much for the music and indeed for the subject ].

Please also read Robert Hugill in Opera Today