Prom 46 (16.8.12): Vaughan Williams – Symphonies Nos. 4, 5 & 6

[edashtav]

I was there last evening too & can only add my congratulations to all concerned, not least RVW of course. On paper I wasn't sure the programme would work but it proved to be an inspired decision and one which I hope others will follow. It made for a wonderful evening on many levels but hearing an orchestral master en bloc was fascinating.

As others have said Manze certainly knew what he wanted & knew how to get it, and the orchestra was fully committed throughout. My friend had never heard any Vaughan Williams symphonic music before & she was bowled over, off to seek out CDs today she said

In Olympic terms this was 3 golds in a row

Yes, an outstanding evening, full of superb playing by the BBC SSO and suffused with interpretative insights from Andrew Manze. You're right, Salymap, Manze earned the right to wear the mantle of the twin Hs and the 2xBs. He played the 5th "con amore"; the best I've heard since Barbirolli & the Halle brought it on tour to Bournemouth (twice, I seem to remember). As soon as the horn call sounded: "Come away, O human child!", I was off to another place, another world indeed, full of hope for peace and plenty. I'd forgotten how economical RVW had been when scoring this symphony. The instruments come in classical pairs; there's no lack of colour but everything blends. To sustain such a mood for over 40 minutes is the mark of a true master.

The Concert was Festival Stuff, without a doubt. RVW's status as a major 20th century symphonist was re-established, or confirmed, depending on one's viewpoint. Others have linked the three pieces to Shostakovich and I felt that, too. The shared ability to create and confront different realities came across strongly, as did a respect for and and an ability to extend the work of past masters. The 4th is to RVW as the 5th is to Beethoven. The bleakness apparent in the slow movement of the 4th and the 6th's finale parallels similar moods in the Soviet composer. And surely, the 6th's epilogue projects Holst's Neptune to a chillier planet - Pluto, perhaps?

Soccer crowds often feel responsible for their team's success & British Olympians have told us how much they owe to their fervent home supporters. I felt privileged to be in a fine crowd of Vaughan Williams supporters at the RAH. We we rapt, full of attention, and dared not applaud until Manze had decided that a decent interval had elapsed after the dying of the echoes. The audience and players were as one, caught up in the magic of music.

Transports of delight that took us through vales of tears, anger, loneliness and love.

Visionary programming by the BBC that brought together a fine band, a tremendously sympathetic conductor and an audience (not only from across Britain but with a fair few from far beyond) that knew it needed to be there.

[salymap]

It's a pity Ursula, VW's widow, died before seeing this apparent resurgence of interest in the symphonies.

[heliocentric]

I think I probably approach an all-RVW programme with a similar attitude to the way most contributors to this forum would approach an all-Webern programme: the kind of things people generally say about RVW's music are things I find offputting, and I have to be in a very particular mood to appreciate it. Having said that, all else being equal I'm generally in favour of single-composer programmes.

The opening of the Fourth is generally described as "harsh and dissonant" or words to that effect, which has always struck me as grossly overstated given that most of Varèse's music (to name only this) was written before it. To me there's something a bit politely and apologetically "English" about the Fourth's flirtation with naughty modern harmonies, which is more often than not reflected in the way it's played, and I find it a very hard work to see eye to eye with so to speak. On the other hand I can't really imagine a performances which would make a better case for this music than this one, even though I still found it difficult - or maybe I mean not "difficult" enough.

In the past I've found some of Andrew Manze's baroque violin work rather dodgy (eg. his grotesquely overornamented recordings of the Bach violin concertos) and some of it superb (eg. his recording of Handel's op.6), but somehow he and the orchestra have together created something quite special in these performances.

The Fifth is a different matter. Its first and third movements (alongside the Third Symphony and the end of the Sixth) are generally enough to convince me that RVW's music is worth getting to know more closely, while in most performances the "teddy bears' picnic" galumphing in the Scherzo is enough to turn me right off again. But somehow not in this performance, which placed much more emphasis on the sometimes quite complex crossrhythms of this movement rather than trying to relate it all back to the most simplistic rhythmical level. Anyway, trying myself not to oversimplify too much, the difference between the Fourth and the Fifth for me is that the Fourth seems like it's trying halfheartedly, and failing, to be something else, while the Fifth concentrates on being itself.

The Sixth doesn't generally do a lot for me, until its closing stages, and this performance of it didn't either, although it's probably the closest I've been to having a performance hold my attention rather than having to concentrate deliberately on staying the course. If the proportions between the symphony and the epilogue were the other way around (Allan Pettersson's Sixth goes some way in this direction) I'd be more interested, but of course RVW would never do anything as radical as that. Again, both the bombast of the penultimate movement and the way it folds itself away neatly rather than really collapsing struck me as a bit half-baked and compromised.

So, I would really like to enjoy more of RVW's music; in the end most of the time I don't, but, having a soft spot for the Third and Fifth, I imagine I'll carry on returning to the others now and then just to make sure… I would download the whole thing and edit out the talking (the announcer managed to fit almost every cliché about RVW and his music in the shortest possible time, a feat which luckily wasn't attempted by Manze and the orchestra) for further listening, but unfortunately it seems that here on Saturn (and indeed on most of your planet too) that facility is not available…

[Nick Armstrong]

It's a pity Ursula, VW's widow, died before seeing this apparent resurgence of interest in the symphonies.

Yes... I was privileged to inhale her cigar smoke while chatting with her having taken part in a performance of 'Serenade to Music' in the early 80s. What a card!

[Northender]

Living on Saturn as 'heliocentric' apparently does, I assume he/she thinks that Mahler's 'Titan' symphony runs rings round anything poor old VW managed to produce?

[Ferretfancy]

Well FF, sad to say it certainly didn't apply on FM tonight (auto-Optimod no doubt) and was audibly broken even on HD sound, the live AAC feed, where the boost to level in the 6th's epilogue sounded manually applied...

What a shame, I might have guessed that the current engineering regime would be insensitive. Incidentally, there was a strange device on a camera platform in the centre of the Arena, featuring large tilted mirrors in a circle with a row of cameras underneath. Apparently it's an experimental 360 degree camera. No doubt we'll be able to make our own choices of audience shots to enable us to spot the coughers from the comfort of our own home!

[ucanseetheend]

Simon Heffer said at the interval on four there was a recently discovered recording of RVW conducting his 5th in 1952. Anyone have any info (quality of sound and performance) on this and its availability?

[ahinton]

The opening of the Fourth is generally described as "harsh and dissonant" or words to that effect, which has always struck me as grossly overstated given that most of Varèse's music (to name only this) was written before it. To me there's something a bit politely and apologetically "English" about the Fourth's flirtation with naughty modern harmonies, which is more often than not reflected in the way it's played, and I find it a very hard work to see eye to eye with so to speak.

Well, of course that's true to the extent that the harshness and dissonance levels are relative and need in any case to be viewed contextually and, after all, such works as Amériques and Arcana were hardly staple concert or recorded fare in England when RVW began to hatch his Fourth Symphony. I think that what is meant is "harsh and dissonant" for Vaughan Williams - or even for music composed in England in general and, although the levels of dissonance achieved in some of Sorabji's works that were already known by a few people at that time might be cited as counter-argument here, they are an exception (and, according to a copy of Felix Aprahamian's "cast list" of audience members at what was by all accounts a disastrous performance of Part I of Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum in London in 1936 by a no doubt well-meaning but hopelessly under-endowed pianist, VW was one of the attendees, so he'd have at least have sampled a harmonic language well outside any then accepted English norms at that time).

Anyway, trying myself not to oversimplify too much, the difference between the Fourth and the Fifth for me is that the Fourth seems like it's trying halfheartedly, and failing, to be something else, while the Fifth concentrates on being itself.

That's a very interesting take on the subject, even if I don't really agree with it! Perhaps had last night's performance of 4 really aimed for the jugular where necessary and gone all guns blazing, that view might have been tempered somewhat...

[Simon B]

Yes and some unpleasant, up-tight little-Englander sorts too. I witnessed a couple of them being pretty rude to other audience members before and after the concert...

Oh dear. Well, every silver lining has its cloud. Unfortunately, this too is an occasional long-standing feature of the seated RAH audience, though not one I've encountered for a long time.

I recall one particular pair of (presumably - due to very regular appearances, always in the same seats) debenture holders whose shared hobby (and possibly only remaining joy in life) was to make a big huffing obstructive fuss about letting others past into their row in the stalls. Presumably, having the absurdly vast wads of lucre involved in owning said debentures in this case went with an attitude that regarded the little people as a tiresome inconvenience. My attitude was that they could get comprehensively stuffed. This seemed to be just what they were expecting from a native of some obscure principality, possibly occupied mainly by troglodites and so psychologically remote that it might as well have been Narnia despite only being 130 miles to the West .

As Douglas Adams so eloquently put it: "To summarise the summary of the summary, people are a problem". Meanwhile, back to some music...

[heliocentric]

Living on Saturn as 'heliocentric' apparently does, I assume he/she thinks that Mahler's 'Titan' symphony runs rings round anything poor old VW managed to produce?

Actually yes I do.

[amateur51]

Yes... I was privileged to inhale her cigar smoke while chatting with her having taken part in a performance of 'Serenade to Music' in the early 80s. What a card!

Not like the two prisoners in Jean Genet's film Un Chant d'Amour I trust, Cali

[amateur51]

.. what was by all accounts a disastrous performance of Part I of Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum in London in 1936 by a no doubt well-meaning but hopelessly under-endowed pianist

Steady on, ahinton - I recall none other than John Ogdon breaking out in a muck sweat on several occasions during a public performance of this piece at QEH aeons ago

[AmpH]

Simon Heffer said at the interval on four there was a recently discovered recording of RVW conducting his 5th in 1952. Anyone have any info (quality of sound and performance) on this and its availability?

I would think that he was referring to this recording on Somm

[heliocentric]

Besides which size isn't everything. (Or so we're told.)

[Pabmusic]

I would think that he was referring to this recording on Somm

Yes. It's a fine performance, though the sound is not good - but what does that matter? The Dona Nobis Pacem was available before on Pearl. Also, don't forget RVW's performance of the St Matthew Passion, which is probably still around.