Ralph Vaughan Williams died 65 years ago today. Here’s the world premiere recording of his Symphony No. 9 of 1956-57. Critics of the day were largely dismissive of the work, finding it enigmatic, and puzzled by the composer’s decision to include among his orchestration three saxophones and a flügelhorn. Horrors!
In recent decades, it seems the very characteristics that confounded the gatekeepers – the symphony’s visionary, violent, elusive, and ambiguous nature – are some of the very qualities for which it is now praised. This is not the kind of valedictory anyone was expecting from the octogenarian so famous for the “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” and “The Lark Ascending.”
RVW had been scheduled to attend the recording session, which, in the event, took place only hours after his passing, on August 26, 1958. The performance is prefaced by a brief, spoken introduction by his great champion, the conductor Sir Adrian Boult.
.youtube.com/watch?v=gpiXjrxRrlY&t
