Not surprisingly, the additional passages change the mood and meter of the piece. While the later score is a perfect example of the sinuously smooth orchestral evolutions that characterise so much of RVW’s orchestral work, the original version is more sporadic and impressionistic, the multi facetted aspects presenting a more varied and startling soundscape. It’s one that, although I love the familiarity of Boult’s reading (and the sheer energy of Handley), does seem to capture the colour and vibrance, contrasts and scale of the London landscape. The extended Second Movement and Finale (both around six-minutes longer than the 1936 score) cast the work in a very different light. If Hickox can’t match Boult’s perfect pacing and building tension (surely the point of the shorter score, after all?) then he makes up for it with the poised precision of his direction and the beautifully delineated, rolling thunder of his crescendos, both helped by the well-defined and spacious acoustic and the dynamic resolution of the recording.
This is definitely a London Symphony to savour: to unwrap over again, to re-examine and reacquaint oneself with. But it’s far from the set’s only appeal. There’s a wonderful reading of No. 3 (the Pastoral Symphony). Written immediately after and as a response to RVW’s war service in Flanders, it is far more French fields than English elegiac, perfectly capturing the strange stillness and unnatural calm of no-mans-land, the juxtaposition of fragile life with desolation and violent destruction, helped no doubt by the dramatic contrasts captured by the recording. There’s definitely no “cow looking over a gate” here! Andrew Davis turns in a bold and dramatic Sinfonia Antarctica that makes for a fascinating contrast with Boult’s atmospheric reading and Previn’s majestic performance. And those are just the highlights. In both musical and sonic terms, this is a consistently excellent set, the performances and the recordings making the most of the SACD format.
My only real regret is the lack of the incidental music that fills out the sides on the original Boult and Previn LPs. The Warner’s release of the Boult set (Warner Classics 087484 2) is similarly bereft (which deprives you of Hugh Bean’s beautiful Lark Ascending), although the Sony Music release of the Previn RCA cycle does include those additional pieces, amongst them the Concerto Academico for Violin, the Concerto for Bass Tuba and Orchestra and a brilliant Overture: The Wasps. However, Chandos do include a number of audio clips both of RVW himself and reminiscences from Boult, Barbirolli and Ursula Vaughan Williams. They may not bear repeated listening, but they’re fascinating nonetheless.
One of the great pleasures in classical listening is exploring different readings of and perspectives on the same work: The greater the work, the wider the range of options. Ralph Vaughan Williams stands alongside Shostakovich as one of the great 20th Century Symphonists. Like all great music, his warrants revisiting on a regular basis. This set does just that. Whether you are familiar with RVW or not, whether the Boult set is indelibly engrained in your memory or you are new to the composer and seeking a place to start, this set represents a wonderful opportunity and superb value. How many RVW symphony cycles does one man need? I have way less than I do for Beethoven, so I’m on pretty safe ground for a while yet…
- 1
- 2
