Ralph Vaughan-Williams
I was amongst the audience at the Promenade Concert in London’s Royal Albert Hall this week when Vaughan-Williams Piano Concerto received one of its rare performances. Unfamiliar with the work I had prepared myself a little by buying a CD of the recording ( Lyrita : Howard Shelley and the R.P.O. conducted by Vernon Handley). Hearing it at home a couple of times I found it difficult to get hold of, but then I am fairly ambivalent about Vaughan-Williams. Whilst moved by much of his work I am never completely captured by his musical world, which I feel is very much of its period. Many people would disagree with me and in this fiftieth year since he died, many of his works are being performed and his considerable contribution to British music re-evaluated.
But hearing the concerto live was a quite different experience. Performed by the young British pianist Ashley Wass, playing with great passion where required and at other times with immense delicacy, it was a deeply committed performance by a pianist of great range but with a particular reputation for English composers of the last century. He and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under Vassily Sinaisky had clearly prepared the performance well, and it came over to a capacity audience as a major work well worth reviving. I am now listening to the recording with a new ear!
The percussive last movement ends with a quiet, calming chord in B minor. I was talking to someone afterwards for whom that ending confirmed his dislike of the concerto. For me it had exactly the opposite effect, as indeed it had for two others near to where I was sitting, who were quite overwhelmed by the whole work. I found the ending very beautiful, almost like a benediction, confirmed by the stillness that followed it, until broken by enthusiastic applause. Wass played a brief encore, which I think was probably a piece by Frank Bridge.
The other music in the programme was Elgar’s ‘In the South’ Overture and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade, both sumptuously played, the viola passages in the Elgar giving me especial pleasure. This is such a good orchestra. There was one unscheduled contributor to the evening however – the weather. During the quieter moments of the concerto’s second movement there was a mighty clap of thunder and the sound of rain pummelling the great dome of the hall.
Even here we couldn’t escape this disastrous British summer!
B.R.
But hearing the concerto live was a quite different experience. Performed by the young British pianist Ashley Wass, playing with great passion where required and at other times with immense delicacy, it was a deeply committed performance by a pianist of great range but with a particular reputation for English composers of the last century. He and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under Vassily Sinaisky had clearly prepared the performance well, and it came over to a capacity audience as a major work well worth reviving. I am now listening to the recording with a new ear!
The percussive last movement ends with a quiet, calming chord in B minor. I was talking to someone afterwards for whom that ending confirmed his dislike of the concerto. For me it had exactly the opposite effect, as indeed it had for two others near to where I was sitting, who were quite overwhelmed by the whole work. I found the ending very beautiful, almost like a benediction, confirmed by the stillness that followed it, until broken by enthusiastic applause. Wass played a brief encore, which I think was probably a piece by Frank Bridge.
The other music in the programme was Elgar’s ‘In the South’ Overture and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade, both sumptuously played, the viola passages in the Elgar giving me especial pleasure. This is such a good orchestra. There was one unscheduled contributor to the evening however – the weather. During the quieter moments of the concerto’s second movement there was a mighty clap of thunder and the sound of rain pummelling the great dome of the hall.
Even here we couldn’t escape this disastrous British summer!
B.R.
posted by Euroresidentes at 11:50 AM
0 comments
