Ralph Vaughan Williams - Film Music, Vol. 1 (Rumon Gamba)

Information

Composer: Ralph Vaughan Williams

• Scott of the Antarctic
• Coastal Command Suite
• The People's Land

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

Rumon Gamba, conductor

Date: 2002

Label: Chandos

https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%2010007

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Review

Of the 11 film scores that Ralph Vaughan Williams penned between 1941 and 1958 the most ambitious and consistently inventive remains that for the 1948 Ealing Studios production of Scott of the Antarctic. It was a project that so gripped the composer that he had already devised much of the musical material long before he had even seen the screenplay (and over the next few years, of course, he refashioned his ideas still further into what would become his Seventh Symphony, Sinfonia antartica). In the event, the film-makers made use of just 462 of the autograph manuscript’s 996 bars, so no VW fan should miss this opportunity to sample his imaginative inspiration.

Personal highlights from a riveting 41-minute sequence comprising 18 numbers include the tenderly compassionate ‘Sculpture Scene’ (track 4, and forerunner to the ‘Intermezzo’ fourth movement of the symphony) and the brief, gawkily good-humoured ‘Pony March’ (track 9). Moreover, one can only marvel at the tone-painting skills to be found in some of the more extended cues such as ‘Ice Floes’, ‘Aurora’ and ‘Snow Plain’ (tracks 6, 8 and 14 respectively). Note, too, the telling contrast between the end titles (which resound with heroic defiance, following the director’s wishes) and the symphony’s bleak conclusion (where the icy wastes have the last, implacable word).

For the Crown Film Unit’s 1942 drama-documentary Coastal Command Vaughan Williams produced a score of superior quality, its powerful sweep and spectacle aptly suggestive of the tireless endeavours of those courageous flying-boat patrols. Written that same year, VW’s 13-minute contribution to The People’s Land (a film about the National Trust commissioned by the British Council) is less immediately compelling but appealing all the same in its folksy charm and lyrical beauty.

Rumon Gamba secures exemplary results from his assembled forces (in the Coastal Command suite the BBC Philharmonic possess that crucial bit more tonal clout than Andrew Penny’s RTÉ band), and the recording is spectacularly truthful to match. I’m already impatiently awaiting Volume 2.

-- Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone

More reviews:
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 9

MusicWeb International  RECORDING OF THE MONTH

https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2003/Feb03/RVW_Film1.htm

https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/2zw6/

http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/c/cha10007a.php

https://www.amazon.com/Film-Music-Vaughan-Williams-1/dp/B00006JK96

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Ralph Vaughan Williams (12 October 1872 – 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His compositional teachers included Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford at the Royal College of Music in London, Max Bruch in Berlin, and Maurice Ravel in Paris. Vaughan Williams' works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over sixty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Vaughan_Williams

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Rumon Gamba (born 24 November 1972) is a British conductor. He studied music at Durham University, and then went to the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 1998, he joined the BBC Philharmonic as its Assistant Conductor, and later became Associate Conductor. He left the orchestra in 2002. Gamba was Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra from 2002 to 2010, and chief conductor of the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra from 2011 to 2015. In January 2022, Gamba became chief conductor of the Oulu Symphony Orchestra. He has made over 50 CDs of for the Chandos Records label.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumon_Gamba

https://rumongamba.com/

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