Ralph Vaughan Williams - Symphony No. 2 (Richard Hickox)

Information

Composer: George Butterworth; Ralph Vaughan Williams

• Butterworth - "The Banks of Green Willow" Idyll
• Vaughan Williams - A London Symphony (Symphony No. 2) (1913 version)

London Symphony Orchestra

Richard Hickox, conductor

Date: 2001

Label: Chandos

https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%209902

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Review

It was during the summer of 1911 that George Butterworth (a victim of The Great War, and whose enchanting 1913 idyll, The Banks of Green Willow, comprises the achingly poignant curtain-raiser here) first suggested to Vaughan Williams that he should write a purely orchestral symphony. VW dug out some sketches he had made for a symphonic poem about London, whilst at the same time deriving fruitful inspiration from HG Wells’s 1908 novel, Tono-Bungay (and its visionary final chapter in particular). Geoffrey Toye gave the successful Queen’s Hall premiere in March 1914, and VW subsequently dedicated the score to Butterworth’s memory. Over the next two decades or so, the work underwent three revisions (including much judicious pruning) and was published twice (in 1920 and 1936). In his compelling 1941 recording with the Cincinnati SO, Eugene Goossens employed the 1920 version, which adds about three minutes of music to that definitive 1936 ‘revised edition’. Now Richard Hickox at long last gives us the chance to hear VW’s original, hour-long canvas – and riveting listening it makes too!

Whereas the opening movement is as we know it today, the ensuing, expanded Lento acquires an intriguingly mournful, even world-weary demeanour. Unnervingly, the ecstatic full flowering of that glorious E major Largamente idea, first heard at fig F in the final revision, never materialises, and the skies glower menacingly thereafter. Towards the end of the Scherzo (at 5'44) comes a haunting episode that Arnold Bax was particularly sad to see cut (‘a mysterious passage of strange and fascinating cacophony’ was how he described it in his autobiography, Farewell, My Youth [Scholar Press; 1992]). The finale, too, contains a wealth of additional material, most strikingly a liturgical theme of wondrous lyrical beauty (try from 6'42) and, in the epilogue, a gripping paragraph (beginning at 15'47) which both looks back to the work’s introduction as well as forward to the first movement of A Pastoral Symphony. Sprawling it may be, but VW’s epic conception evinces a prodigal inventiveness, poetry, mystery and vitality that do not pall with repeated hearings, and, time and again, I find myself marvelling at just how hugely influential its intoxicatingly colourful orchestral palette must have been on Holst’s The Planets and even Bax’s wartime tone-poems.

Hickox and the LSO respond with an unquenchable spirit, generous flexibility and tender affection that suit VW’s admirably ambitious inspiration to a T, and Chandos’s sound is big and bold to match. Quite simply, an essential purchase for anyone remotely interested in British music

-- Gramophone

More reviews:

ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 7

https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2001/May01/RVW2.htm

https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2001/June01/RVW2.htm

http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/c/cha09902a.php

http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/c/cha09902b.php

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vaughan-Williams-Symphony-original-version/dp/B00005B54X

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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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Richard Hickox (5 March 1948 – 23 November 2008) was an English conductor of choral, orchestral and operatic music. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, then was an organ scholar at Queens' College, Cambridge. Hickox founded the City of London Sinfonia, as well as the Richard Hickox Singers and Orchestra, in 1971. He was Chorus Director of the London Symphony Chorus (1976 to 1991), Artistic Director of the Northern Sinfonia (1982 to 1990), Principal Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (2000 to 2006), and Music Director of Opera Australia (2005 to 2008).

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

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