Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Vaughan Williams

Vaughan Williams Remembered on WWFM

With all the hoo-ha surrounding the 100th anniversary of the death of Claude Debussy, it’s easy to forget that Ralph Vaughan Williams (who studied for a time with Ravel) died 60 years ago today. Yeah, I know 60 doesn’t quite have the marketing punch of 50 or 100, but Vaughan Williams is one of my all-time favorite composers, so I am going to go with it.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll remember one of England’s finest composers by way of three rare recordings he made of his own music.

Unlike Sir Edward Elgar, who was given the opportunity to record most of his major output, 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.

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,” the work which actually brought tears to the eyes of Sergei Rachmaninoff at its first performance in 1938. The text is 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.”

This 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 remember RVW on the 60th anniversary of his death. That’s “Vaughan, But Not Forgotten,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

August 26, 2018
British Composers at Marlboro: Vaughan Williams & Bax

On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll be doing some real Channel surfing – the English Channel, that is – with two works by British composers who were steeped in cross-cultural currents.

Ralph Vaughan Williams studied in Paris with Maurice Ravel for three months in 1907-08. Ravel took few pupils, but he said of Vaughan Williams, “he is my only pupil who does not write my music.” For his part, Vaughan Williams credited Ravel with helping him to overcome a heavy Germanic influence. Ravel had the effect of lightening the textures in Vaughan Williams’ music and sharpening his focus.

Vaughan Williams’ “Phantasy Quintet” of 1912 was one of numerous works commissioned from England’s great composers by one Walter Wilson Cobbett, a businessman and amateur musician whose dual passions were chamber music and music of the Elizabethan era. (“Phantasy” was Cobbett’s preferred spelling.) The quintet is full of Tudor inflections and stamped by Vaughan Williams’ tell-tale love of folk music. The composer doubles his violas, and the instrument is heard to great effect throughout the piece. We’ll hear a performance from the 1975 Marlboro Music Festival, with James Buswell and Sachiko Nakajima, violins; Philipp Naegele and Caroline Levine, viola; and Anne Martindale, cello.

Sir Arnold Bax composed his evocative “Elegiac Trio” in 1916. The work, scored for flute, viola, and harp, appeared the year after Claude Debussy’s trio for the same instrumental combination. Its alluring melancholy emerged from a world at war. Bax was especially affected by escalating tensions between England and his beloved Ireland, which had just boiled over into violence with the Easter Rising. We’ll hear a performance of the trio from 1978, with Carol Wincenc, flute; Caroline Levine, viola; and Moya Wright, harp.

Ravel too had his influences. His String Quartet in F major, composed in 1903, when he was 28 years-old, bears a superficial resemblance to Debussy’s famous quartet. But whereas Debussy’s aim was to obscure the rules of classical harmony in a sensual pursuit of greater artistic freedom – he confided to his diary, “Any sounds in any combination and in any succession are henceforth free to be used in a musical continuity” – Ravel returned to classical standards, revealing his mastery through quiet innovation within traditional forms. We’ll hear a performance from 2007, with Soovin Kim and Jessica Lee, violins; Jonathan Vinocour, viola; and Scott Bae, cello; from a concert that took place at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA.

Musicians from Marlboro tour several times throughout the year. The final tour of this season will take place from April 29 to May 6, with stops in Greenwich, CT (at Greenwich Library); New York City (Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall); Philadelphia (Perleman Theater at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts); Washington, DC (Freer Gallery’s Meyer Auditorium); and Boston (the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum). On the program will be Haydn’s String Quartet in D major, Op. 20, No. 4; Krzysztof Penderecki’s String Trio; and Johannes Brahms’ String Quintet No. 1 in F major, Op. 88. You’ll find more information at marlboromusic.org.

It’s a Franco-British alliance this week, on “Music from Marlboro.” Join me Wednesday at 6 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

A bewhiskered Maurice Ravel in 1907, the year he met Ralph Vaughan Williams

April 25, 2018
WPRB Sunday: Theater Music & Vaughan Williams

The subject may be “incidental,” but the music is center stage, this Sunday morning on WPRB. Join me for music written for the theater by the likes of Ludwig van Beethoven, Karl-Birger Blomdahl, Aaron Copland, Gabriel Fauré, Jean Sibelius, and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

The featured highlight of the morning will be a complete performance of Vaughan Williams’ “The Wasps,” written for a 1909 Cambridge University production of Aristophanes’ satire. The composer re-arranged parts of the music to create a five-movement concert suite – the overture is especially well-known – but the complete, original, 80-minute score went unheard for nearly a century after its premiere. In fact, this is its first recording, set down in 2005. Bawdiness and spleen characterize the highly vernacular translation by David Pountney.

Everyone knows where a wasp wears its stinger, this Sunday morning from 7 to 10 EST, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. We’ll do our best to stay ahead of the behind, on Classic Ross Amico.

February 25, 2018
Christmas Eve Music Parry Vaughan Williams

On Christmas Eve, with much gift wrapping and cooking yet to be done, we pause to remember the story of the first Christmas with music by a couple of English composers inspired by the Nativity.

Alongside Sir Charles Villiers Stanford and Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Hubert Parry was one of the key figures of the so-called “English Musical Renaissance.” He influenced a whole generation of much better known composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. We’ll hear his “Ode on the Nativity,” given its first performance on the same concert, at the Hereford Three Choirs Festival in 1912, as Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on Christmas Carols.”

Vaughan Williams, the great-nephew of Charles Darwin and an atheist in his youth, later softened into a kind of cheerful agnosticism. He dearly loved the King James Bible, and he especially enjoyed Christmas. Of course, he wrote much music on the subject. In fact, his very last composition was “The First Nowell.” He worked diligently at the piece, inspired by medieval pageants, during his final month, but died suddenly before its completion.

However, even at 85 years-old, RVW retained a remarkable concentration. He managed to pound out the whole thing in short score in only a few weeks. Furthermore, he had actually orchestrated the first two-thirds. The finishing touches were applied by his assistant, Roy Douglas – he of “Les Sylphides” fame.

If you like the “Fantasia on Christmas Carols,” I think you’ll really enjoy this. It’s pastoral music for a pastoral scene. Join me for “A Play in a Manger,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

December 24, 2017
Vaughan Williams’ Job on WWFM Today

Be patient for “Job: A Masque for Dancing.” Experience Ralph Vaughan Williams’ unsung masterpiece, inspired by the Book of Job, from the Hebrew Bible, in an illustrated edition by William Blake. It’s coming up this afternoon in the 2:00 hour EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

November 7, 2017

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