Vaughan Williams trio of symphonies
at the BBC Proms
Prom 46: Thursday 16th August, Royal Albert Hall
A surprising and intriguing programme brings a trio of very different and powerful symphonies from the 30s and 40s. Andrew Manze conducts the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth.
Andrew Manze who is Associate Guest Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra writes, "Vaughan Williams is one of those composers some people have fixed ideas about ... I'm on a bit of a mission to rehabilitate him in people's minds as an important figure in the music making of this country."
William Hedley music critic and editor of The Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, writing for MusicWeb says,
"Of the three symphonies associated with the period of the Second World War, the violence of the Fourth has been explained by many as the composer's response to the rising threat of another global conflict. The Fifth was given its first performance at the height of the war, yet it is one of the composer's most untroubled works, at least on the surface, closing in "pure blessedness" (Ottaway, p40). And then in the Sixth, composed in large part after the war, we find neither optimism nor hope, but something rather more akin to the mood of the Fourth, yet different: more complex in its effect and profoundly enigmatic."
Read more:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2002/Apr02/hedley.htm#ixzz1tzijBBCk