What a lovely surprise! I just got an email yesterday from the New Jersey Festival Orchestra announcing its 2023-24 season, and what should be on the very first set of concerts, but Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 5! My favorite Vaughan Williams symphony! (Also on the program, another Fifth Symphony by some guy named Beethoven.) Needless to say, I purchased my ticket immediately. There will be two performances, at St. Helen’s Church in Westfield (on Friday, October 6, at 7 pm) and Drew University Concert Hall in Madison (on Sunday, October 8, at 3 pm). David Wroe will conduct.
Vaughan Williams’ radiant Fifth Symphony was an unexpected beacon of hope composed during the darkest days of World War II (1938-1943). Some of the musical ideas were carried over from his work on the long-gestating opera “The Pilgrim’s Progress.”
The symphony is dedicated to another one of my all-time favorites, Jean Sibelius. When Sibelius heard the work in Stockholm, conducted by Malcolm Sargent, he wrote, “This symphony is a marvelous work… the dedication made me feel proud and grateful… I wonder if Dr. Williams has any idea of the pleasure he has given me?”
It’s interesting that Vaughan Williams, a self-professed agnostic (whose stance softened from a youthful atheism), often proved to be such a spiritual composer. Those in the audience at the symphony’s premiere, with the 70-year-old RVW conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra, emerged from Royal Albert Hall fortified and prepared to face whatever challenges the future might throw their way.
I can’t wait to luxuriate in this masterpiece, which I have only heard in person twice over my decades of concert-going – with André Previn and the Curtis Orchestra in Philadelphia in 1995 and Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra at the Bard Music Festival in 2011. It was performed by the Chicago Symphony last season, but to fly to Chicago for a concert, for me, would have been an extravagance.
Interestingly, a couple of quick Google searches reveal performances of the Fifth this season with the Baltimore and Utah Symphonies. Perhaps others? As always, I ask that you keep your antennae up, and if you learn of any Vaughan Williams performances, especially within a three-hour radius of Princeton, please let me know!
Thank you, New Jersey Festival Orchestra!
For the complete NJFO season, look here:
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