Vaughan Williams's Veranda

[vandermolen]

It includes the Mass in G Minor?

No, but the Mass is on two other Hyperion discs:

[Lethevich]

No, but the Mass is on two other Hyperion discs:

I can vouch for the first, especially due to the interesting and quite accessable coupling. It is a pretty substantial improvement over the Naxos disc containing the same work.

[karlhenning]

Thanks for that, Sara;  a couple of times I nearly reached for that Naxos disc, but my musical angel stayed my hand . . . .

[lukeottevanger]

Thanks for that, Sara;  a couple of times I nearly reached for that Naxos disc, but my musical angel stayed my hand . . . .

Care to send him or her my way? - no one stopped me buying that disc. And maybe Sara's right - the music is sublime, but somehow I have difficulty staying alert during that Naxos disc.

[karlhenning]

Care to send him or her my way?

No, but I see the cherub he could send your way 

[lukeottevanger]

Never mind, I've found some angels of my own. Here they come....


0:) 0:) 0:) 0:) 0:)

[karlhenning]

None of them bears a flaming sword . . . .

[Lethevich]

Hehe, it's definitely not a bad disc, but the acoustics especially leave something to be desired IIRC. RVW's choral "hits" have been quite fortunate in the studio, easy to buy a lot of them cheaply in nice performances, mass included - Nimbus, Chandos, the Helios Hyperion, etc

[Guido]

It may be the weakest, or (obviously) the least like mature VW, but it's still a great work, ambitious, sweeping, and penetrating. It explores a sometimes Parry-an (Parrian? Parry-ian? - Parry-like!) direction that VW didn't really take much further, but on those terms it is pretty much completely successful.

Interesting. I'll know what to expect then. The female vocalist is someone in my year at college who hadn't really sung seriously before coming to university as far as I am aware, but last year she played the lead in Holst's Savitri in the Cambridge round church (imagine how good that was), and it was easily the best thing I've ever seen at Cambridge, possibly the best concert I've ever been to.

We're doing Haydn C major cello concerto in the VW1 concert as well so I am happy!

[pjme]

  Exceptional concert in Leuven /Louvain! : RVW's Sea Symphony !


Brussels Philharmonic en Koor Lemmensinstituut o.l.v. Michel Tabachnik
Koorvoorbereiding: Kurt Bikkembergs

Annelies Meskens, sopraan – Thomas Bauer, bas-bariton

Een ode aan de zee. In La Mer schetst Claude Debussy zijn indrukken: 'het ruisen van de zee, de zacht gebogen lijn van een horizon, het geritsel van de wind in de bladeren, de schreeuw van een vogel'.  Vaughan Williams evoceert in zijn Sea Symphony de natuurlijke grootsheid van de oceaan.

Inleiding door Jeroen D'hoe  om 19.15 uur

i.s.m. 30 CC en Brussels Philharmonic

Wanneer

Vrijdag 19 december 2008 om 20u

Toegang

Rang 1: 20€
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Rang 2: 15 €
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Campus Lemmensinstituut
Herestraat 53
3000 Leuven
T:016 23 39 67
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I'll be there...

[scarpia]

Myself, I have no trouble with a sustained arc of relatively muted dynamic range.  This, too, is a kind of tension.  With which point, I think your overtaxed patience is a mode of agreement.

Listening to an old favorite, Sibelius 6, raised this issue in my mind again.  Sibelius 6 has the same outlines as VW 3, opening two movements are generally restrained and reticent, a flash if fire in the third movement, satisfaction comes in the finale.  The difference is that Sibelius 6 works for me, there always seems to be an undercurrent in the reticent passages that threatens to come to the surface but doesn't.  The tension is palpable, until the final movement comes and the floodgates of sound are opened, figuratively.  (The recording I have most recently listened to is Karajan's ~1980 version with Berlin on EMI, which is excellent.)  V-W's 3rd, to my ear, fails where Sibelius succeeds.  Perhaps my lack of discernment is the problem, but the first 25 minutes of V-W 3 are just plain boring.  Nothing of interest, no tension, just flutes doodling in the background.  When the big climax comes in the final it doesn't strike me as the fulfillment of anything.  The impression it makes is, "oh, finally he had an idea."  In any case, perhaps I'll come across a recording of this piece which makes sense, but at this point I don't see it.

[lukeottevanger]

You don't feel any undercurrents of tension in VW 3? Blimey - for me, this is the most tension-y undercurrent-y symphony VW wrote! Where you hear flutes doodling I hear a massive sense of disjunction and disconnection, an aimlessness, perhaps, but one that is frightening and disconcerting. The duality implicit in the constant false relations and implied bitonality in this music means that the textural smoothness is constantly questioned by and belied by the harmony, and this is disturbing. The whole symphony proceeds in this way, from this opening state, to my ears...

[Dundonnell]

You don't feel any undercurrents of tension in VW 3? Blimey - for me, this is the most tension-y undercurrent-y symphony VW wrote! Where you hear flutes doodling I hear a massive sense of disjunction and disconnection, an aimlessness, perhaps, but one that is frightening and disconcerting. The duality implicit in the constant false relations and implied bitonality in this music means that the textural smoothness is constantly questioned by and belied by the harmony, and this is disturbing. The whole symphony proceeds in this way, from this opening state, to my ears...

My dear Luke, that is a splendid technical description!

Sadly, I am not a musician I respond to the piece on an entirely 'aesthetic'/subjective/contextural basis. To me it is VW's response to the landscapes and countryside of Northern France as he saw them during World War One. I know full well that this may be a facile contextural gloss applied by later writers to a work which can be enjoyed and appreciated as 'pure music'. You allude to the unease, the fear evoked by the music and I totally agree.
I used to regard the Pastoral as one of VW's less interesting symphonies. No longer! To me it is indeed a masterpiece which has enormous power to move me emotionally.

I am not-in any way-trying to be critical We all respond to music in different ways and I am sure that your own responses are every bit as complex(and probably more so!) than mine.

[lukeottevanger]

My dear Luke, that is a splendid technical description!

Sadly, I am not a musician I respond to the piece on an entirely 'aesthetic'/subjective/contextural basis. To me it is VW's response to the landscapes and countryside of Northern France as he saw them during World War One. I know full well that this may be a facile contextural gloss applied by later writers to a work which can be enjoyed and appreciated as 'pure music'. You allude to the unease, the fear evoked by the music and I totally agree.
I used to regard the Pastoral as one of VW's less interesting symphonies. No longer! To me it is indeed a masterpiece which has enormous power to move me emotionally.

I am not-in any way-trying to be critical We all respond to music in different ways and I am sure that your own responses are every bit as complex(and probably more so!) than mine.

Oh, don't worry - I agree entirely, and I hear the symphony in the same terms as you do, I must admit. It's just that, well, this aspect of the piece has been described on this thread before, but the superb technical means by which VW creates this haunting sound has not, leaving space for imputations of meandering which the music doesn't deserve. IOW - the effect is as you describe it, but this is (partly) how VW achieves it, that's all. Scarpia descriptions of his responses to music tend to focus around certain areas, as far as I've read them - he tends to mention his dislike of certain instrumental effects, his preference for certain contrasts of tempo and dynamic, and there's nothing wrong with either (in fact, sensitivity to these issues is just as important as any other type of sensitivity). But in doing so he tends not to talk about the notes themselves, and I think that's a shame, because it is there that VW's genius is most evident, I think.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

To me it is VW's response to the landscapes and countryside of Northern France as he saw them during World War One. I know full well that this may be a facile contextural gloss applied by later writers to a work which can be enjoyed and appreciated as 'pure music'..

an observation

It seems to me that listeners who believe this symphony to have its roots in VW's wartime experiences have a higher opinion of it than listeners who don't know this detail of VW's biography. Am I being unjust to the work if I therefore describe it as a symphonie a clef which requires such an external prop to produce its full effect?

As an aside, I was on vacation in Karelia a couple years ago, and bits of Sibelius 6 kept popping into my head (especially the 2nd movement). However, my (high) evaluation of the quality of that piece didn't change as a result.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

an observation

It seems to me that listeners who believe this symphony to have its roots in VW's wartime experiences have a higher opinion of it than listeners who don't know this detail of VW's biography. Am I being unjust to the work if I therefore describe it as a symphonie a clef which requires such an external prop to produce its full effect?

A very interesting observation. In my case, though, the music spoke to me (age 16, I think) before I even knew it could in any way be related to WWI. I always could hear VW was holding back, was keeping something in check, which literally becomes vocal in the last movement. So I agree with Luke's 'tension-y, undercurrent-y'...

[lukeottevanger]

Same goes for me, too. I find the piece inseparable from my knowledge of its wartime associations. But when I first heard it, as a teenager, on a knackered old LP with no liner notes, I had no such knowledge - and yet I still felt this menacing, keening, bleak undertone. Even the faster, more literally mundane music seemed earthy, clod-bound, clumping as if on mud.

[karlhenning]

A very interesting observation. In my case, though, the music spoke to me (age 16, I think) before I even knew it could in any way be related to WWI. I always could hear VW was holding back, was keeping something in check, which literally becomes vocal in the last movement. So I agree with Luke's 'tension-y, undercurrent-y'...

Similarly, I came to an immediate liking to the piece, in ignorance of biographical considerations, just for the piece of music that it is.

[Mark G. Simon]

I didn't really get it until I actually played it, earlier this year. I'm a recent convert.

[karlhenning]

What a great piece to play, Mark!  Learning such a piece 'from the inside' is such a rich experience.