BaL 6.04.24 - Vaughan Williams: A Sea Symphony

[seabright]

^^^ Thanks. I did tap "YouTube" into the 'search' field but I don't think those links came up. Anyway, at least I now know!

[LaurieWatt]

Hello, everyone. I have not been on for a while. I was surprised by the final Sea Symphony choice but went ahead and bought it. I wish I had streamed it first to check whether i agreed with DON. it is actually a fine performance but commits the unforgivable sin, for me, in that there is no organ. This is crucial at the opening as it is with the quiet, deep pedal at the outset of the fourth movement with those great long waves which someone has already pointed out that VW simulates so well. It is the only recording I know where this omitted - or, if it is there it is inaudible. I have very wide ranging equipment and the recordings by Haitink, Boult, Davis and Brabbins are models of how it should be done. actually the real low frequencies are generally rather lacking as the bass drum is hardly audible either.

[Barbirollians]

Good to see you back Laurie.

[smittims]

Vaughan Williams was generous in allowing his works to be played with reduced forces, though he did say that of the 'missing' instruments in this work, the organ was the most important . It's certainly more important than the organ in Mahler 2, which has been omitted in some recordings, notably the much-praised 1966 Solti.

In a private letter VW lamented that in every work where he had said that the second harp was 'ad lib' he had never known a preformance with two harps!

I should not like to hear the 'S.S' with no organ.

The bass drum is a favourite instrument of mine and I often notice how well it comes out in recordings. It doesn't seem to be affected by the date of the recording: I've known some very old discs (even 1920s) where it's truly massive and modern recordings where it's just a thwack in the background. A good one is Barbirolli's HMV 'Swan of Tuonela'

[LaurieWatt]

Yes, I have JB's Swan and it is as you say. The irony of the Howard Arman recording on the bass drum point is that his CD cover picture features....a bass drum! Thank you for the detail about the 'ad lib' organ, which i had not checked, mea culpa, but i cannot imagine the opening of the symphony and the first few minutes of the last movement without it. Many decades ago I was playing in the horn section of what was the Oxford Orchestral Society in a performance of the Sea Symphony under the baton of the late Dr Sydney Watson in the Sheldonian. No missing organ there. I was so overcome when the opening fanfares return that I had almost to stop playing.

[smittims]

Thanks for that personal reminiscence. You may be interested to know that in a change to the scoring made late in life the horns don't play in the opening fanfare, where VW asked for them to be replaced by the trombones. It's in a letter to Sir Adrian Boult of 1947, printed in Hugh Cobbe's splendid collection of VW's letters. I think both the Boult recordings adopt this request.