“A symphony must be like the world,” Gustav Mahler famously proclaimed. “It should embrace everything.”
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This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” our focus will be on works inspired by seasonal poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley and others.
We’ll hear Geoffrey Bush’s “A Summer Serenade,” composed in 1948. The seven movement work is based on poems by Shelley, James I of Scotland, Samuel Daniel, William Blake, Thomas Heywood, and the ever-prolific Anonymous.
Then we’ll have Arnold Bax’s rarely-heard “Enchanted Summer,” from 1918. The text is from Act II, Scene 2, of Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound.” Composed in the middle of a string of Bax’s better-known nature poems, including “Into the Twilight” and “In the Fairy Hills” on the one hand, and “Nympholept” and “The Garden of Fand” on the other, the work begins with a depiction of light and shadow across a forest floor, mysterious caves and crags, and musical evocations of woodland spirits; continues with nightingales, in the second part; and two fauns, commenting on the wondrous things they have witnessed, in the third.
I hope you’ll join me for “Summer Shelley, Some Are Not,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Oh, Ralph, you’re such the contrarian. You wrote that embodiment of English pastoralism, “The Lark Ascending,” in response to the War to End All Wars. Then in peacetime, in the early 1930s, you composed your most turbulent symphony, the Symphony No. 4. Some say that already you sensed the impending cataclysm of World War II. Then when the war finally hit, you turned around and wrote your most serene symphony.
On this date in 1943, you unveiled your Symphony No. 5. Queen’s Hall lay in ruins from German bombs, so you conducted the London Philharmonic at Royal Albert Hall. Perhaps unexpectedly, the audience that day found itself awash in hope and optimism. In place of the seemingly obligatory bluster of a “wartime symphony,” there was a sense of affirmation in a musical celebration of humanity and tradition. London may be rocked by air raids today, but England, the country and its people, would endure.
You had already long been flirting with your pet project, the opera “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” for decades. The symphony shares the same sense of faith and optimism in the face of seemingly implacable adversity. The audience emerged into the sunlight on that summer afternoon feeling refreshed and ready to face the future.
The Symphony No. 5 (dedicated, by the way, to Jean Sibelius):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9YoEETzYsE
PHOTO: Vaughan Williams and Foxy in 1942
If your three wishes would encompass a complete recording, in up-to-date sound, of one of the most enchanting film scores by Miklós Rózsa, you needn’t hold out for the discovery of a magic lamp. I hope you’ll join me for a recent release of a two-CD set, on the Prometheus label, of music from the classic 1940 fantasy-adventure “The Thief of Bagdad.” The City of Prague Philharmonic and Nic Raine have recorded the score, note-complete, with ample bonus material. Tune in to be transported. Take the magic carpet ride, this Friday at 6 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
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