BaL 8.02.14 - Vaughan Williams Symphony no. 9

[Barbirollians]

So, it was Vernon Handley and the RLPO by a short head. I sense that the definitive RVW 9th has yet to be recorded. Will it be Andrew Manze's ?

Not a work where a definitive version is possible IMO . Well not since Barbirolli died anyway

[BBMmk2]

It would make a lot of sense if Chandos or Onyx or somebody licensed the Proms recording.

In fact I will have a chat to an industry contact and suggest it.

Go for it!!

[VodkaDilc]

And no bloody whistling this week - or wearing one's learning very heavily indeed. Sorry but I find DON teeth-grindingly irritating - the expression "smackable" comes to mind - unlike JS, who had me immediately go and play the symphony.

Exactly my feelings - though DON is slightly less irritating on the radio than the dreadful Patrick Moore look-alike we see on the television.

J Swain is one of the few remaining treasures on R3.

[ardcarp]

I thought Jonathan Swain was brilliant too, and agreed, he ought to be used more on 'mainstream' R3. BUT he was reviewing a work about as different from Greig's P-C as it would be possible to find. DON's task last week was mammoth...reviewing a pot-boiler with squillions of recorded versions and the mannerisms of star pianists thrown in. In other words we are not comparing like with like. We all knew DON's approach was likely to be entertaining...and I for one enjoyed it. Swain was dignified and quietly knowledgeable about a slightly enigmatic and definitely less familiar masterpiece.

Vive la difference in presenting styles!

[Nick Armstrong]

What an utter treat this programme was! (So was DON last week, in a different way - I'd defend him up hill and down dale too). But Jonathan Swain's analysis was as good as music broadcasting gets, in my opinion. I was open to persuasion about VW9 anyway (see my #52 above)... and had a couple of hours to myself at the end of the afternoon, so listened in a darkened room, replaying certain extracts to hear what JS had been saying, and generally just revelling in the music and his wonderfully delivered and expressed comments on the piece and the performances. Transported, I was...!

I find that on my shelf are Boult/LPO (1969) and Slatkin - the latter is playing, as I was intrigued by the non-pesante reading of the scherzo (wanted to hear those saxophones again), and entranced by other sections from the performance... Not including the rather rancid tuning of the bugle in the slow movement, alas - though not as bad as Previn's...

Perhaps I should acquire the Previn?

I wouldn't, Bbm... that bugle and the almost incredible fluff by the trumpet in the last movement

My eyebrows shot up to hear that Haitink's 2000 recording is the most recent - pretty shocking I think that there's not been one since then. It must be only a matter of time (and funding... ) before Manze's cycle starts to come out on CD etc...

I loved the way Jonathan S played 'hunt the saxophone' in the scherzo - and (as T-Nog points out) the description of the 'Stonehenge' music; ditto, of the conclusion. The coda did sound utterly fabulous in the recommended Handley recording.

Handley on a single disc seems to be in 2 manifestations - EMI Eminence (just ##6 & 9) and a CfP issue with the Greensleeves Fantasia as well. Anyone know if they're the same mastering?

I'm going to get it, for sure.

Addition: having listened to both the Slatkin now and the Boult, what an amazing recording EMI gave the latter (both sound very good, but the EMI is a quarter of a century older!). The harps.... !!!!

Revelatory 50 minutes, Mr Swain, if you're looking in - many many thanks


(PS - the perfect subject for BAL, imo - i.e. the length of the piece and the number of available readings)

[PJPJ]

What an utter treat this programme was! .......

Quite so, an exemplary BAL, and of a work I admire enormously. Truly a treat. Thanks JS.

[Alison]

I'd love to see Sir Jonathan back on Gramophone's reviewing team too.

He's unusually good on both detail and broad sweep.

[EdgeleyRob]

a couple of hours to myself .......... listened in a darkened room,

The only way to listen to RVW 9 IMO.
It was a cracking programme.

[jayne lee wilson]

I'd love to see Sir Jonathan back on Gramophone's reviewing team too.

He's unusually good on both detail and broad sweep.

At great risk of self-repetition, a huge pleasure of the Gramophone Archive is Jon Swain's reviews, most especially of French music. You can't go far in that living museum without running into him...

[Maclintick]

An excellent BAL from Jonathan Swain and his recommendation of Handley with the RLPO was a safe one fot those new to this work.

I think the Haitink/LPO has better sound and an almost Brucknerian grandeur. Although he dismissed Previn's LSO account
suggesting that the conductor was bewildered by the last movement I think it needs serious consideration it's by far the longest
a brooding, mysterious landscape and a powerful ending.

I would agree that a definitive account of this symphony has yet to be recorded. Andrew Davis live performance at the 2008 Proms
was IMHO the best so far but the CD of it that came with BBC Music magazine was not considered. Davis is conducting the symphony with
the BBC Philharmonic this year so maybe a recording with Chandos?

Barbirolli did conduct the symphony in the Halle's 1959 season.

Jon Swain gave us a lively yet rigorous synthesis of the fateful, programmatic & pictorial elements of VW9, Tess, Salisbury, Stonehenge etc., allied to a keen appreciation of the epically symphonic & self-consciously valedictory nature of the work, rightly emphasising the significant relationship to the 6th, also in E minor, & the prominent role for the saxophones. This may be a heretical opinion, since the composer always defined himself in opposition to the Germanic tradition, but the harp-laden major-minor oscillations of the final bars of VW9 remind me of nothing so much as the eternally-questioning closing pages of "Parsifal" . From the "Sea Symphony" onwards VW is concerned with the numinous, existential questions, so perhaps it's not surprising that in his final great work he draws together threads from his earlier essays in the form, from the Whitmanesque to the post-apocalyptic. A great late masterpiece, & a wonderful broadcast. Thanks, JS.

[FoxyTheCat]

"From the "Sea Symphony" onwards VW is concerned with the numinous, existential questions, so perhaps it's not surprising that in his final great work he draws together threads from his earlier essays in the form, from the Whitmanesque to the post-apocalyptic. A great late masterpiece, & a wonderful broadcast. Thanks, JS."

Beautifully put.

For me this great symphony, if it is about anything, is about re-cycling. The recycling of atoms which, whatever your religious belief is a fundamental fact of our universe.
We are born, grow and gain experience, mature and then inevitably die whence the atoms that make us up return to the cosmos to be re-used. The ending perhaps represents
the composer disappearing back in to the cosmos for eternity.

[richardfinegold]

"From the "Sea Symphony" onwards VW is concerned with the numinous, existential questions, so perhaps it's not surprising that in his final great work he draws together threads from his earlier essays in the form, from the Whitmanesque to the post-apocalyptic. A great late masterpiece, & a wonderful broadcast. Thanks, JS."

Beautifully put.

For me this great symphony, if it is about anything, is about re-cycling. The recycling of atoms which, whatever your religious belief is a fundamental fact of our universe.
We are born, grow and gain experience, mature and then inevitably die whence the atoms that make us up return to the cosmos to be re-used. The ending perhaps represents
the composer disappearing back in to the cosmos for eternity.

Interesting interpretation, Foxy. What would your take be on the last movement of the 6th Symphony?

[richardfinegold]

OT slightly, but I find RVW such an interesting figure. Can anyone recommend a good biography of him?

[FoxyTheCat]

Interesting interpretation, Foxy. What would your take be on the last movement of the 6th Symphony?

The ultimate reality, there is no God. a niente (nothingness)

[FoxyTheCat]

OT slightly, but I find RVW such an interesting figure. Can anyone recommend a good biography of him?

RVW A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams by Ursula Vaughan Williams (OUP) is the most authoritative.

For a quicker read Vaughan Williams in The illustrated Lives of Great Composers series by Paul Holmes (Omnibus Press)

or for a short visual presentation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA4NGeyalPg