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

[amateur51]

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

Many thanks, AmpH

http://www.somm-recordings.com/somm/ifield.php?id=125

[An_Inspector_Calls]

An excellent concert - enjoyed the interval talk as well.

If I have any quibbles they'd be:
4th Finale slightly too fast; but wonderful brass playing. Terrific second movement.
5th Finale again too fast, and I didn't sense the Passacaglia very well; did someone turn the trumpets down? That nust be one of the finest playings of the Romanza I've ever heard.
6th Finale too loud, but was that engineering. However, it was beautifully played - but then, is it meant to sound so beautiful?

A cycle from Manze would be no bad thing!

[AmpH]

Many thanks, AmpH

http://www.somm-recordings.com/somm/ifield.php?id=125

Thanks for the somm link Am51 - I was trying to find it without success.

For anyone considering this recording - it is very well worth having as the performance is, imho, superb. It is however a live historic recording, so there is some audience noise at times and there is a fair amount of variable background noise most noticeable of course when the music is at its quietest. Personally this doesn't unduly bother me as the ears rapidly adjust and the performance simply envelops you. Makes a fine complement to the LSO / Previn recording !

[salymap]

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!

Well I can only cap that Cali with being privileged to help push her husband into a small lift at the library. He wss very deaf, large and tweedy and a tight fit for the lift. Never met/saw Ursula except on TV. Bestio

[ahinton]

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

Ah, so you were there, too! But it wasn't that many æons ago - it was July 1988 in QEH, just three months before the composer's death, rather than 1936 when the pianist was indeed by all reliable accounts "hopelessly under-endowed" (at least for his chosen task), a description that would have to be the very opposite of that which one would apply to John Ogdon! John's performance started awkwardly, tentatively and by no means happily but, as it continued, he seemed to gather energies from somewhere and it turned into an historic event that certainly gripped his audience. Apparently, the less glorious John - Tobin, as it happens - seems to have done the opposite way back in 1936 and was reported to have taken around 90 minutes to cover what should barely have exceeded 40, much to the irritation, chagrin and no doubt boredom of at least some members of the audience, especially the composer. From this, it is clear that, just as Sorabji's friend William Walton was to declare that "they got the wrong Malcolm" when Williamson was appointed MQM in the 70s, the composer evidently went to hear the wrong John playing his work on the wrong occasion, although there was no way that he could have made it to the Ogdon performance as he was nearing 96 at the time and in no state to travel.

Anyway, it would have been intriguing (assuming that Aprahamian was right) to hear VW's comments on what he heard in Cowdray Hall in 1936, although I am unaware that any have ever been published. Searle was also there as, I think, was Rubbra (who had published a review of Opus Clavicembalisticum's publication a few years earlier); Searle remembered the occasion as one on which a clearly fascinating an unusual piece of piano music was presented quite unintelligibly.

Anyway - back to RVW the symphonist!...

[AmpH]

Thanks for the somm link Am51 - I was trying to find it without success.

For anyone considering this recording - it is very well worth having as the performance is, imho, superb. It is however a live historic recording, so there is some audience noise at times and there is a fair amount of variable background noise most noticeable of course when the music is at its quietest. Personally this doesn't unduly bother me as the ears rapidly adjust and the performance simply envelops you. Makes a fine complement to the LSO / Previn recording !

Further to the above regarding the Somm RVW5 recording with the composer conducting, there is also this informative review :-

http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_cd_review.php?id=5403

[amateur51]

Further to the above regarding the Somm RVW5 recording with the composer conducting, there is also this informative review :-

http://www.classicalsource.com/db_co...ew.php?id=5403

Now that's what I call detail

Many thanks for this link, AmpH

[prokkyshosty]

[edit]

http://www.musicpreserved.org.uk/news.php?news_id=15

...which has been preserved from acetates featuring the LPO in the RAH in 1950, the same crew that premiered it in the same building, seven years before. WHAT I WOULDN'T GIVE to have been in the RAH when the Fifth was premiered in 1943, in the middle of the war, dropped like the most beautiful and delicate of bombs.

Edit: whoops!? is it the same? One is 1950, the other is 1952?
Edit edit: Never mind, I'm pretty sure this one I found is the same as the Somm, just with an inaccurate date on the webpage. Please carry on.

[ucanseetheend]

Is it available as a download, On spotify maybe?

http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_cd_review.php?id=5403

[Pabmusic]

Is it available as a download, On spotify maybe?
http://www.classicalsource.com/db_co...ew.php?id=5403

I don't know about that, but the Somm disc is available as an mp3 from Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Symphony-No-...5206144&sr=8-2

[rauschwerk]

Is it available as a download?

Lossless formats available from http://www.theclassicalshop.net/

[parkepr]

Maybe not so much the pianissimo-like finale of 6, an ending almost as quietly shattering as Shostakovich 4.

agreed... both fantastic endings that constantly amaze!!

[johnb]

Although I enjoyed what I heard of the concert (I missed VW6) I can't be as enthusiastic as many here (perhaps I wasn't in the right mood). They were good performances but ones that somehow didn't move me as I had hoped they would. Perhaps I have been spoilt by growing up with the Barbirolli and Previn recordings of numbers 5 and 4 respectively. (Has anyone ever captured the almost mystical 'time standing still' effect of the end of the Romanza in No 4 the way that Barbirolli did? Pure magic.)

I was listening to the iPlayer stream (fed to my audio system via Squeezebox) at fairly realistic levels and felt there was something not quite right about the balance, etc. Often the woodwind solos seemed inordinately prominent and I never got a sense of real pianissimo - as I said, somehow something didn't seem quite right. (I actually wondered whether some automatic dynamic range management was in play. Not Optimod of course but something more subtle.)

It might be my imagination, of course.

[french frank]

Martin Kettle in the Guardian gives it *****s

[Hmmm - not an impolite abbreviation: I meant ]

[Nick Armstrong]

Martin Kettle in the Guardian gives it *****s

[Hmmm - not an impolite abbreviation: I meant ]

Quite right too!