 |
| Bernard Haitink, LPO Vaughan Williams Cycle 2004 EMI release Eric Seddon Collection |
London Philharmonic Orchestra
London Philharmonic Choir
Bernard Haitink, conductor
Sheila Armstrong, soprano Felicity Lott, soprano
Amanda Roocroft, soprano Ian Bostridge, tenor
Jonathan Summers, baritone
Sarah Chang, violin
I couldn't wait to get my hands on this box when it first came out in 2004. Haitink's cycle was nearly twenty years in the making, the earliest having been recorded in 1984 (Symphony No 6), the last released in 2001 (8 & 9). All were recorded in Abbey Road's Studio 1. Haitink's recording of Symphony 5 in D major was my introduction to the piece, way back in 1995. I was a graduate student in music history at the time, and before then had only heard one RVW symphony - Sir John Barbirolli's London Symphony with the Halle. While I loved that recording, it didn't inspire me to look into the rest of RVW's cycle. By contrast, Haitink's profound rendition of the fifth set me on a journey into Vaughan Williams's works that continues to this day.
I believe Haitink to be an important interpreter of Vaughan Williams. I don't know if he set out to be deliberately unique, or if it was just the natural result of his being a Dutchman and therefore not bound to approach them in such an English way, but this is a different perspective than other cycles. I don't mean to say they lose their "Englishness" in his cycle, but there is a sense throughout these recordings that they are simply great music - not that they have to have a subset category of being great English music.
It's astonishing to me that, considering how huge and complex a piece it is, there really aren't a bunch of lousy recordings of A Sea Symphony (No 1) out there. Like so many others, Haitink's satisfies. I'm not one who usually puts too much on the soloists - if they do the job in this piece, that's usually enough for me. But there is something different about Felicity Lott's singing in the first movement, and the way she blends, particularly at the end, with the chorus. It's a magical moment. There is a type of tranquillity that Haitink brings to Vaughan Williams's music, evident even in this first symphony - it's a quality that is becomes more pronounced as the cycle continues. Call it a living stillness at times, or a stillness without stopping. I think many musicians attempt this, but few achieve it. Some have derided this cycle as 'boring' but perhaps they aren't hearing the quiet tension, the movement below the surface of the music that Haitink reveals. These are not obvious recordings, but among the subtlest.
The choir here sounds more youthful than many recordings of the Sea Symphony. Perhaps it was. Credited are both the London Philharmonic Choir and a group called Cantelina (the Ladies Choir of the Colchester Institute of Music). There is less heavy vibrato, especially in the womens' voices - the result is a youthful freshness, and a lighter quality for what can become a very heavy piece in the wrong hands. If it didn't herald a new era of Vaughan Williams choral performance, this recording from 1989 was at least part of the sea change that paved the way for the many magnificent choral recordings of the 1990s, by many groups, featuring clarity and a youthfulness, without warbling vibrato. Here they achieve a numinous quality, similar to what we hear in the later Sancta Civitas. The ending moved me as much as any other great recording of the piece - be it Boult or Previn, or whomever - giving an odd, beautiful sense of safety amidst exploration (something VW would not always express, but certainly did here). Haintink's version is among the very best.
A London Symphony (No 2) is the most accessible and 'normal' of the nine symphonies of Vaughan Williams for those who like big tunes and romantic sounding orchestration - it fits into the idea of 'nationalist' symphonies of the late 19th and early 20th century quite well, and is therefore a great introduction to his music. Haitink is once again unique for his sense of stillness at the beginning. This isn't music to listen to while driving to work or going for a walk - you'll find it boring if you do. Only sitting and listening carefully reveals the tension under the surface. I think it rewards that sort of listening, but my guess is that this is better for the seasoned Vaughan Williams fan - not a first exposure. As I suggested with Rostropovich's Tchaikovsky Cycle with this same orchestra a decade earlier, this is one to have as a contrasting interpretation, among more standard options like Boult, Previn, Handley, and Slatkin. Listen to the end of the epilogue, though. If anything proves RVW is not merely a 'nationalist' composer, but on to something more fundamental to the human soul, it's this ending of A London Symphony. Haitink lingers right to the edge of RVW's musical vision, allowing us to peer with him.
Paired with this symphony on Disc 2 is the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. Haitink reveals glorious, ruminative music of shimmering textures and shades of meaning.
Haitink's great strength as an interpreter of Vaughan Williams reveals itself more fully in the symphonies written after World War I - the ruminative, increasingly contrapuntal, meditative works take on new meaning and depth. The Pastoral Symphony (No 3), which was based upon RVW's wartime experience and has even been called the composer's "War Requiem" by Michael Kennedy is given a profound reading. The sound is gorgeous. The natural horn and trumpet moments are beautiful. Honestly, among the many great recordings of the third, I don't think any of them surpass Haitink and the LPO. Call it a stillness without stopping - deep waters shimmering on the surface.
The centerpiece of Haitink's cycle, though, is the Symphony No 5 in D major. From the very opening pedal tone in the bass and the horn call reminiscent of both Ravel and Sibelius (to whom the symphony was dedicated), the music is imbued with luminosity unmatched in any other recording of this work. We seem immediately beyond time - the warmth and lift achieved by Haitink gives new meaning to the music. I think it was Frank Howes (an early critical champion of RVW's music) who called this symphony the 'Benediction.' It certainly feels like a blessing here. Sitting with the score as I write this, I'm just marveling. The orchestra is so good, and the pacing perfect. The second movement scherzo is, admittedly, not as crisp as some other recordings, but the Romanza third movement has exactly the sacred quality it deserves. The original inscription above the third movement read "He hath given me rest by His sorrow and life by His death." It's a moment taken from RVW's opera, The Pilgrim's Progress, which he feared would never get staged (it did, finally, in 1951). The Passacaglia fourth movement feels like a folk dance in heaven at times. This recording lives up to Michael Kennedy's description of the fifth as the 'Symphony of the Celestial City.'
Symphony No 6 in E minor was the first recorded of this cycle. I was concerned there might be a noticeable difference in quality or sound reproduction, as there were considerable advances in CD recording between 1984 and 2001, but there is nothing to worry about - it matches the rest of the cycle. The opening movement is brilliant - the contrast between the first and second, jazzier theme is more pronounced than nearly any other recording. Haitink really moves the music quickly here. If anyone tells you his tempi are universally slow, don't believe them. This and the aforementioned F minor Symphony (No 4) are proof Haitink's tempi are as varied as any cycle. The broad tune with harp - the Purcellian moment we all wait for in the first movement - is likewise contrasted, starting simply then soaring, as it should. No one does these moments better than Haitink.
The second moves with real direction and pace as well - perhaps the fleetest other than Slatkin's, which was to follow nearly a decade later for his masterful cycle with the Philharmonia on RCA. The fullness, yet transparent lightness of the sound achieved by the LPO and the crew at Abbey Road is maintained throughout with the greatest consistency. Haitink's concept of blending is more continental in style - the instruments merge into each other to create new sounds rather than remaining distinct, as in more typically British style. This gives a totally different texture to these performances than Vernon Handley's with the RLPO. Both are among the very best cycles of RVW out there, and I wouldn't say one was any more important than the other, but they show different facets of this flexible music which can yield so much. The tension Haitink builds at the end of the second movement through stringendo and the thundering, contrasted with drawing back, is amazing - the listener almost wants this impending doom to stop, but Haitink & Co won't let it. The musical insistence is supreme, until the tense truce declared by the strings and cor anglais, beautifully delivered.
The tenor saxophone soloist in the scherzo is one of the finest ever recorded for this piece. It's a shame recordings never include the names of the actual musicians. Everyone else and his brother is listed in the credits, but not the musicians who performed. It's the most bizarre and unfair aspect of the classical recording world over the past century. The rest of the scherzo is great - emphasizing the monumental aspect of the catastrophic vision of the piece, perhaps, though there is plenty of violence as well.
Haitink's fourth movement epilogue seems quicker paced than most recordings, but that's only because he stays true to the metronome marking in the score (quarter note = 56). Check out the score sometime, if you can read music. Look at the number of times RVW writes senza cresc. ("without crescendo") and see the number of beautiful, fully exposed solos where that is accomplished by the musicians of the LPO - the bass clarinet, the oboe, the french horns, trumpets. Pitch is maintained virtuosically. It's a beautifully, hauntingly effective recording of the piece to the very end.
Rounding out this disc is In the Fen Country - in a satisfyingly expansive reading you'd expect from Haitink - and the orchestral version of On Wenlock Edge, featuring Ian Bostridge singing the tenor. RVW preferred the orchestral version (probably made in 1922) to the original chamber version. This recording is exceptional - Bostridge is as good as it gets on this repertoire, and the pairing with Haitink is fortunate indeed.
Haitink's version of Sinfonia Antartica (No 7) is one of the more pessimistic readings available, which is justified: it's probably RVW's most pessimistic symphony. The initial brass climax of the Prelude doesn't sound triumphant as in Boult or Slatkin's versions, but menacing and wary. The strings, Sheila Armstrong's wordless soprano, and the women's choir are chilling.
The second movement is masterful. The recorded sound places the listener almost aurally inside the orchestra (this is a feature of this cycle as a whole). All of the sound effects and instruments are heard clearly. The penguin music, often barbarically treated, is played lightly with a sense that penguins are actually cute! And who doesn't want cute penguins? Much better than the savage nightmare penguins of some recordings.
If you struggle with depression, maybe skip this landscape movement. Boy this is a grim one! I mean, it's a grim piece - in this reading it really sounds like RVW's 'anti-Sea Symphony' Symphony; almost a negation of youthful optimism. Whatever else you might say, you can't accuse Haitink of trying to rosy things up. The intermezzo is suitably nostalgic and broad.
The epilogue is stoic, as the beginning, and overall this is a stoic reading of Sinfonia Antartica rather than heroic.
One way of looking at the last three symphonies of Vaughan Williams is that they're a set of reflections on his career as a whole: Sinfonia Antartica a stoic, pessimistic reflection on A Sea Symphony, while the 8th and 9th symphonies, ultimately, have the same psychological program: leave taking. That two symphonies by the same composer should have similar programs isn't surprising. Tchaikovsky's 4th and 5th have the same trajectory - a fate motif overcome. Similarly, Beethoven 5 and 9 harken back to the Eroica. Vaughan Williams gives us 8 and 9, which seem to be wresting with dark questions, seeking resolution in a nocturnal landscape, finding release among the stars.
Symphony No 8 in D minor opens with vibraphone, celesta, harp and a questioning trumpet. Jokingly referred to by its composer as "variations in search of the theme" the score actually calls it "Variazioni senza tema" (variations without a theme). It strikes me as the closest movement in RVW's works to Ives's Unanswered Question. Haitink gives it a broad existential reading here - and he remains committed to this throughout the piece. The second movement is a biting march scherzo for the winds only. If Sinfonia Antartica is a stoic reflection on A Sea Symphony, this march is a commentary on VW's earlier wind band music. The elegaic movement for strings also seems a tender reflection on the Tallis Fantasia and Variants on Dives and Lazarus. The fourth movement once again gives the sensation, thanks to the sound quality, of being inside the music itself - the slower tempo enables us to hear many details inaudible on other recordings. As with others in this cycle, this isn't a standard interpretation - for that you'd turn to Barbirolli, Handley, Boult's second recording of the piece, or Slatkin. But Haitink seems to approach this with a seriousness others don't. Whether that seriousness is compelling to listeners is probably a matter of personal taste.
Symphony No 9 returns to the E minor of the Sixth Symphony, and is RVW's ultimate leave taking. Inspired by Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, it begins with a vision of Stonehenge at night, travels across Salisbury Plain to the beat of a ghostly drummer, until climbing the spire of Salisbury Cathedral into the stars.
Haitink's 9 begins gentler than most other renditions, emphasizing lyricism rather than dread. It's more majestic than imposing, more heroic than harrowing. I appreciate this interpretation, as the last three symphonies of Vaughan Williams can be very dark, psychologically - that Haitink seems to view the Sinfonia Antartica as the low point of pessimism in the cycle and a continuous arc higher from that point is releiving. His engagement with the counterpoint is more lyrical, less savage than other recordings. The flugelhorn playing here is some of my favorite. What a mournful instrument the flugel is in this context. On the original release of the CD, Ann McAneney was given credit, but for some reason she was omitted in the credits for the box set.
The second movement continues its course and Haitink remains committed to a lyrical interpretation. This is part of the reason I've called the 5th symphony the center of this set: you can finally hear how the 9th relates back to the 5th. In most cycles, they bear very little resemblance. There is more light and contrast in Haitink's 9th than in other versions.
The third movement reminds me of how well John Williams must have known this piece. So much from Star Wars and E.T. seem prefigured. The textures revealed by Haitink at the beginning of the fourth movement harkens back to music from Hodie and the portraits from the England of Elizabeth. Haitink transforms what is often performed as relentless and grim to a gentler landscape, more dance-like in expression. The blending of the orchestra in the massive sections is gorgeous - no two colors are alike from moment to moment. For me this is the finest recording of Vaughan Williams 9: my first recommendation for anyone approaching it. It almost seems like the piece languished, misunderstood, for over forty years, until recorded here.
In summary, I think the Haitink cycle is unique in its perspective and important for serious listeners of RVW. It focuses on sound and lyricism, placing the Symphony No 5 at the center. I consider it a contrasting cycle to Boult, Handley and the others - listeners will probably want to hear a more traditional approach before tackling these, but once you really know them, you'll want to hear the great Dutchman's ideas, executed so beautifully by the London Philharmonic.
No comments:
Post a Comment