Charles Munch conducts Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 8 - Boston Symphony (1958)
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. 8 was first performed in 1956 by Sir John Barbirolli and the Halle Orchestra. Its US Premiere followed shortly afterwards, given by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. Leopold Stokowski conducted the work in the composer's presence at the Royal Festival Hall in London in 1957 and played it again at the 1964 BBC Proms concerts.
The performance heard here comes from a stereo broadcast given in 1958 by the Boston Symphony under Charles Munch. This work is seldom played, even in the UK, due to the expense of engaging the extra percussionists required for the finale only, as well as the cost of hiring extra instruments. In addition to Side Drum, Bass Drum, Triangle and Cymbals, the score requires Vibraphone, Xylophone, Glockenspiel, Tubular Bells and Tuned Gongs.
This symphony has never had a commercial studio recording made outside England. It's a pity that Charles Munch didn't record it for RCA at the time because on the strength of this Boston broadcast he'd have swept the board!
It has now been released on CD by Pristine Audio on PASC 368 along with music by Ravel (with whom Vaughan Williams studied) and D'Indy.
Four movements: click on the blue timings below to hear them separately ...
(1) 'Fantasia'
(2) 'Scherzo alla Marcia' (at about 10:45)
(3) 'Cavatina' (at about 14:25)
(4) 'Toccata' (at about 23:15)
Splendid and sensitive performance. A very moving Cavatina...
Was introduced to this marvelous symphony when copies of it were placed on our music stands in our University Orchestra. A riot to rehearse and play from start to finish!! Marvelous performance this is. Many thanks for sharing!!
Great stereo recording which is rare for live performances from this era. Possibly the best performance as well, so a double win!
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What an INCREDIBLE Scherzo!
A great performance-I am really surprised that Charles Munch is such a wonderful conductor of Vaughan Williams music-thanks so much for posting this enchanting recording!!!!!
Loved it........it has all the clarity of a modern CD
What a wonderful performance and interpretation by Munch and the BSO.At times it has an'On The Waterfront' brutality,yet is also hauntingly moving.
Charles Munch brings a vigor and punch to RVW,s great symphony that is so lacking in most performances. Most British conductors treat this music with too much sentimentality (Barbirolli & Boult being exceptions) which is the wrong way IMO. thanks for this post, much appreciated.
Maestro Munch really nails this piece.
Great recording. 4th movement = Percussion heaven
Very remarkable performance. Thanks for uploading!!!! And for all the details you took the trouble to write.
This is easily the most persuasive performance of VW8 I've ever heard (and I own several versions on CD, including Barbirolli and the much-praised Haitink versions). Thanks for sharing this - I shall buy the CD!
Agreed Colin. The 1st movement has never sounded more convincing.
I have listened to this symphony many many times, usually the Boult and Barbirolli versions. Hearing this is like listening to a new symphony. So many different rhythms, and individual instruments. If Colin likes it as well, that’s a huge recommendation !
My apologies,an afterthought.Why the hell is this incredible music not performed more often,you never hear it on continental europe.
Vaughan Williams dedicated this symphony to his friend the great conductor Sir John Barbirolli. Vaughan Williams called him "Glorious John". Sir John was one of the finest conductors of VW's works.
Superb!
WOW! What a find... great performance too. What else are you "mining" from the Munch/BSO broadcast archives? Maybe a live "La Valse?"
As I pointed out in a recent article for the Musical Times it is also
possible to hear the VARIATIONS FOR BRASS BAND (1957) as a kind of fifth
movement in a manner that reflects a kind of divertissiment: the
'variations with a theme' of the brass band work complements the first
movement 'variations without a theme' of the symphony and the 'brass
band' forms another 'consort' of colors complimenting the 'consort'
colors of the individual movements of the symphony. The unprecedented
presence of celesta and glockenspiel in the brass band work amplifies
the connection to the "all kinds of phones" of the symphony finale. It
is a creative way of looking at it but, as I show in my analysis, there
are many thematic links between the two works that are also in dialog
with the Ninth Symphony. (The "lack of cohesiveness" in the Eighth, as
noted by others also, also accommodates such connections.)
The channels are reversed on this broadcast (violins are on right not left and trombones on left not right) but nomatter, easy to turn headphones around. A very fine performance by Munch with Roger Voisin his usual characterful self (how one wishes for trumpet players with a distinct persona and sound nowadays!). I prefer Stokowski in the piece because he makes it even more dramatic and gets the first movement climax right, building up to it rather than having it appear almost from nowhere as Munch does. But there's little to choose between Stoki and the Maitre - both stellar conductors.
I heard the 8th before any other VW symphonies. Although I probably have listened to the 4th and 6th more since, I do marvel at the easily missed depth of this one. I wonder if it's possibly the most mature thing he ever wrote. The 9th seems to be too self-conscious and aware of itself to claim that title.
I think it worth mentioning that RVW across the breadth of his career employed motifs from earlier periods in English music.
He also wove in themes derived from his work compiling church music, and dialectical folk music.
These musical threads were not at all en vogue in the early 20th century, have been written off by the supporters of the more angular and unmelodic serialist movement, championed by people like Benjamin Britten.
Lesser composers derided RVW for harking back to a chocolate-box version of Albion dominated by pastoral scenes and friendly country folk.
Constant Lambert is such a detractor. It is very interesting to note that, in his rebuke of RVW's symphony #3, that he confuses pastoral with pastural.
Had Lambert been truly listening he would have understood the fields RVW had in mind, were in France and Flanders.
RVW's spirituality and the use of ambiguity in his music - to evoke a kind of emotional upwelling that straightforward key-based scoring does not evoke - is also unjustly criticised. RVW achieved this through the use of modes - such as used for centuries in in the plainsong of the Catholic Church and early music such as that composed by Hales and Dowland.
This expression was written off as mawkish sentimentality by those wishing to explore chords, rhythms and sharp intervals, the lines through which never resolved with a tonic.
In my view, this music was fashionable and dominant in its time. But RVW's music is for all time and surpasses fashion and elitist conceptions of what music is worthy and what is not.
I sometimes muse that Britten's venomous strikes at RVW's heart have more to do with his own limitations than those of RVW.
For as hard as I strain my ear to hear one, I can find no melody or depth in Britten's work. Nor any flair for anything other than being musically clever.
Britten is to RVW what Charlie Parker is to Louis Armstrong.
RVW is for the ages. Others are already receding into the kind of reverence reserved for them only by musicologists and social anthropologists.
This is of course, my opinion. I welcome other views.
Hey, no dissing the Bird, man.
Have to agree that RVW stands outside fashion and is for the ages. And yes, I can find nothing of interest in Britten. Cold and methodical to my ears.
@@pp312 Cold? You call "Peter Grimes" cold? Or the violin concerto, or the War Requiem?
Both RVW and Britten are composers for the ages.
Hey...Bird was no trumpet playing dandy!
A hypothesis of mine is that RVW's music sounded very different to audiences of the 1950's, 1960's then they do to audiences today. Audiences today grew up watching Hollywood movies like Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lord of the Rings, etc. and the music for these films is often a copy/pastiche of RVW's symphonic style. Thus for me, having grown up in the 1970s and 1980s, blocks of RVW's symphonies "remind" me of Star Wars, and perhaps I downgrade it accordingly. Whereas for those who grew up in the 1950s or 1960s it would be the reverse (the Star Wars film music reminds them of RVW!).
The best of all performances of this piece. That of Sir Adrian Boult, for all his "class", seems pallid by comparison.
RALPH Vaughan Williams ( as in Ralph rhyming with Alf) Ouch! Apparently RVW would go crazy if his first name was mispronounced . His first name actually should sound like Rafe i.e. it should rhyme with "Safe".
When I was forming my life-long passion for RVW's music back in the 1960s, announcers in America universally pronounced his name "Ralph." I don't recall hearing "Rafe" until maybe the 1980s
It's Boston, remember. There used to be an old joke in which a Boston Brahmin at a tea party asked one of her guests where she was from. The guest said, "I'm originally from Iowa." The Bostonian replied, "Oh, my dear, around here we pronounce that 'Ohio'."
The only reason why I knew how to pronounce his name correctly was because I heard people pronounce Ralph Fiennes this way.
@@Quotenwagnerianer Until I saw his name in print, for some years I thought the actor was called Ray Fiennes!
No one would have made this mistake if they were familiar with HMS Pinafore. Vergogna.
British performances of this symphony tend to err on the polite side. Munch (an Alsatian Frenchman who fought for Germany in WWI and lost an umlaut along the way) plays the sh!t out of it instead, with an American brass section the likes of which doesn't exist in England, but should be clearly audible on both sides of the Atlantic.
Excellent observation.
Been listening to Vaughan Williams symphonies for 30 years, and Tanglewood broadcasts for 35 and never realized Münch performed this. Still think Stokowski set the example in the US though.
Agree. The Stokowski/BBC live from 1964 is amazing. The big, glorious climax near the end of the 1st Movement has never sounded better than in that performance. LR@@ilirllukaci5345