Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Vaughan Williams’ Wasps Premiere: Unassuming Start

How unassuming was the premiere of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ incidental music for “The Wasps?”

Aristophanes’ comedy, a stinging commentary on the Athenian judicial system, was produced as the Cambridge Greek Play at Trinity College in 1909. The play itself was performed in Greek, with translations sold to the audience. As you can see, when you click through the gallery of photos at the link at the bottom of this post, the composer’s credit is buried midway down the third page of the printed program (as “R. Vaughan Williams”). The music is offered for sale, “price three shillings.”

The year before, Vaughan Williams spent three months in Paris studying with Maurice Ravel, who was at first reluctant to take him on as a pupil. But RVW wouldn’t take no for an answer. Despite his earthy disposition (his response to Ravel’s assignment to write a minuet in the manner of Mozart was met with an unprintable response), Vaughan Williams quickly earned his teacher’s admiration and soon his friendship. Ravel later remarked that Vaughan Williams was “the only one of my pupils who does not write my music.” RVW, already in his mid-30s and three years older than his teacher, learned his lessons well (at least the ones he considered valid), assimilated what he found useful, and applied it to the achievement of his own objectives.

Ravel’s influence is most evident in the transitional moments of “The Wasps Overture” and in its dreamy central section. The opening, of course, is a musical joke, self-evident from the onomatopoeic buzzing around the orchestra, but the middle introduces one of those immediately endearing, big-hearted English melodies. The jolly, rollicking theme in the outer portions of the overture sounds equally homegrown.

Vaughan Williams’ complete incidental music runs to approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes. It was recorded for the first time, with English narration, in 2006. The overture has been a concert favorite since its introduction. Vaughan Williams himself recorded the jauntiest version on record, back in 1925, at a manic 7 minutes and 25 seconds. An average performance of the work is more in the ballpark of 9-10 minutes.

You’d think that more American orchestras would have taken it up as a guaranteed crowd-pleaser to open concerts during this RVW sesquicentennial year. But U.S. music directors and administrators – “The Lark Ascending” and the “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” aside – remain largely immune to the charms and allure, and certainly the versatility, of Ralph Vaughan Williams. For the composer’s enthusiasts, it’s a good year to live in the U.K.

“Gentlemen who are willing to be tried for the chorus are requested to state whether their voices are tenor or bass.” Stills from the 1909 Cambridge production.

https://www.cambridgegreekplay.com/plays/1909/wasps

The overture opens this 26-minute concert suite, which also includes the equally charming “March Past of the Kitchen Utensils” (at the 13-minute mark).

Vaughan Williams and Ravel

https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2014/feb/28/ravel-vaughan-williams-friendship-radio3-ravel-day

October 10, 2022
Saint-Saëns Danse Macabre & Halloween

I’m going to be celebrating an awful lot of Vaughan Williams the next few days, but just so as not to completely snub Camille Saint-Saëns on his birthday (today), here’s a seasonal favorite.

“Danse Macabre” was originally conceived as a chanson for voice and piano. The composer made several other arrangements. Most famous is the more fully developed orchestral work, but he also wrote a version for voice and orchestra. Here it is performed by Nelson Eddy, of all people.

Still, it’s better than Nelson’s commercial recording, which is terrifying for all the wrong reasons.

Here’s a translation of the text, by Henri Cazalis:

Zig, zig, zig, Death in cadence
Striking a tomb with his heel
Death at midnight plays a dance-tune
Zig, zig, zag, on his violin

The winter wind blows, and the night is dark;
Moans are heard in the linden trees
White skeletons pass through the gloom
Running and leaping in their shrouds

Zig, zig, zig, each one is frisking
You can hear the cracking of the bones of the dancers
A lustful couple sits on the moss
So as to taste long lost delights

Zig zig, zig, Death continues
The unending scraping on his instrument
A veil has fallen! The dancer is naked
Her partner grasps her amorously

The lady, it’s said, is a marchioness or baroness
And her green gallant, a poor cartwright
Horror! Look how she gives herself to him
Like the rustic was a baron

Zig, zig, zig. What a saraband!
They all hold hands and dance in circles
Zig, zig, zag. You can see in the crowd
The king dancing among the peasants

But hist! All of a sudden, they leave the dance
They push forward, they fly; the cock has crowed
Oh what a beautiful night for the poor world!
Long live death and equality!

Happy birthday – and happy Halloween – Saint-Saëns!

October 9, 2022
Vaughan Williams Rare Recordings

Unlike Sir Edward Elgar, who was given the opportunity to record most of his major output, Ralph Vaughan Williams was generally overlooked as a conductor by the major labels – which is a shame, because the few recordings he did make are superb.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll anticipate the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of England’s finest composers (October 12, 1872) by way of three rare recordings he made of his own music.

Among the acoustical documents, none match the hilarity of RVW’s 1925 performance of “The Wasps” overture. Vaughan Williams’ recording is by far the fastest – and jauntiest – “Wasps” on record, although I’m unsure whether it is due to the composer’s own preference, or because of the limitations of the technology. It’s hard not to smile at such manic high spirits.

By contrast, his 1937 recording of the Symphony No. 4 is a masterpiece of temperament and ferocity – all the more jarring in that the turbulence evoked in the work is not at all what most people associate with this composer. The urgency of the music is captured, eerily, at a time when the ink was still fresh on the page and the world was on the brink of chaos. It certainly belies the snide dismissal of much of the composer’s output as languid “cow-pat” music.

In all, Vaughan Willliams’ meager commercial discography as a conductor wouldn’t even fill two hours. It is most fortunate, then, that a few concert recordings have emerged over the years. We’ll conclude with of one of RVW’s loveliest pieces, the “Serenade to Music,” a work which, at its first performance, actually brought tears to the eyes of Sergei Rachmaninoff. (On the first half of the concert, Rachmaninoff was soloist in his own Piano Concerto No. 2.) The text is taken from Act V, Scene I, of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.”

“How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night,
Become the touches of sweet harmony.”

The recorded performance was captured at Royal Festival Hall on November 22, 1951. Vaughan Williams was 79 years old. What’s especially remarkable is that the recording features 11 of the 16 soloists who sang in the work’s 1938 premiere. We’ll hear it from a compact disc issued on Albion Records, the official label of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society.

Vaughan Williams’ ashes are interred in Westminster Abbey alongside some of the nation’s greatest artists – yet, in some measure, the composer is still underestimated, especially by those outside the British Isles. I hope you’ll join me as we celebrate RVW for his sesquicentenary. That’s “Vaughan, But Not Forgotten,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

October 9, 2022
Vaughan Williams Film Music Celebration

It’s a Vaughan Williams weekend, as we anticipate the sesquicentennial of the composer’s birth on October 12, 1872!

First, “Scott of the Antarctic” (1948) anchors an hour of music from movies about explorers and exploration on “Picture Perfect.”

John Mills plays explorer Robert Falcon Scott on his determined push to the reach the South Pole in this Ealing Studios docudrama.

Vaughan Williams’ classic score became the basis for his Symphony No. 7, which he called “Sinfonia Antartica.” (Note the Italian spelling; the composer dropped the first “c” from the title of his symphony, dooming the work to incessant misspelling.) We’ll hear selections from an extended suite from the film score, from the first of three CDs issued on the Chandos label that, collectively, offer an overview of Vaughan Williams’ work for the cinema.

The balance of the hour will be devoted to music from films about Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo, and Meriwether Lewis & William Clark.

Yeah, okay, so conquest is so not “in” right now. Nevertheless, as Monday is Columbus Day, we’ll hear a suite from “Christopher Columbus” (1949), a Gainsborough Pictures release. Fredric March plays the title role, in a film inspired by a novel of Rafael Sabatini (author of “Scaramouche” and “The Sea Hawk”).

The music is by Arthur Bliss, who in 1950 would receive his knighthood and, in 1953, his appointment as Master of the Queen’s Music.

If you think March a strange choice to play Columbus, just imagine Gary Cooper in “The Adventures of Marco Polo” (1938). Cooper assumes the role of the famed Venetian merchant who travels the Silk Road to China. Despite the ludicrous casting, the film yet manages to entertain, with Basil Rathbone, fine as always, as the villain.

The music is by Hugo Friedhofer. Friedhofer was such a successful orchestrator, he remained largely in the shadows of the film score luminaries he assisted. He lent his distinctive touch to many now-classic scores by Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. “The Adventures of Marco Polo” was Freidhofer’s first big chance to step up and show what he could do as a composer. He would have to wait until 1942 for another. It wasn’t until 1946 that he won a much-deserved Academy Award for his score to “The Best Years of Our Lives.”

The westward journey of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark has been a source of perpetual fascination for Americans. In 1997, Ken Burns directed a PBS documentary “Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery.” National Geographic climbed on board a few years later with “Lewis and Clark: Great Journey West” (2002). The 42-minute featurette was released in IMAX theaters, with narration by Jeff Bridges and music by Sam Cardon.

Corn and tomatoes from the New World! Spaghetti and fireworks from the Orient! Snow cones and frostbite from the Antarctic! Discover explorers and exploration this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Then tune in on Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, for more Vaughan Williams on “The Lost Chord,” as the composer conducts his own music in three rare recordings. I’ll post more about that tomorrow.

We’re gearing up for 150 years of RVW, on the silver screen and in the concert hall. Happy birthday, Ralph Vaughan Williams!

October 8, 2022
Lifeforce & The Omen Horror Movie Talk

Full-frontal vampires from outer space? This is an existential threat that needs to be encountered head-on! And Roy and I are just the guys to do it. Our blather about “Lifeforce” (1985) has been posted here:

Is there anything creepier than creepy kids? Especially when they turn out to be the spawn of Satan? Next week, Halloween month continues with a Revelatory conversation about Richard Donner’s diabolical hit “The Omen” (1976).

Join us in a chorus of “Ave Satani” in the comments section – this is Jerry Goldsmith’s only Oscar-winning score – as we count to 666 on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, when we livestream on Facebook, next Friday evening at 7:30 EDT!

https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner

October 8, 2022

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