Ralph Vaughan Williams: Symphony No.4 (1931/1934)

[@dr.davidanfam5151]

Astonishing and never surpassed performance.

[@KENDODYL]

Unbelievable,raw,and energised,and has a dated sound which i like.

[@noiselesspatient]

Oh my. So much restless momentum and turbulent rubato. What a wonderful treasure to have this recording. Thank you.

[@IzabelParis]

Wonderful ! Obvious reminders of Martinu & Bernard Hermann! Quizzical & beautiful.

[@dbtrains172]

Simply amazing, and it gives an idea of just how good the British orchestras were becoming before the war decimated the ranks of musicians (and everyone else). The lyrical second theme in the first movement ... fantastic.

[@BrianMonroe7890]

This is both an amazing work and amazing performance. I cannot recall any other recording where the orchestra was so precisely on point with the syncopation (and it isn't easy). This is very much worth listening to for the performance alone!

[@ruramikael]

The quality of the recording is stunning, since it is possible to follow three separate voices at the same time in the score. This is especially important in the fugato sections of the second and the fourth movements. Not many recording engineers and conductors can accomplish this today.

[@andyjackson4691]

Stunning version my favourite 🎶🏄‍♂️🎶thank you so much 🎶

[@philippalmer2741]

Bloody hell! VW was 65 at the time of this recording, when most people are supposed to be slowing down. Not a bit of it. A stunning performance.

[@robertfrankgill5962]

All performances of this work are electric. It's just that this one is super-electric.

[@petrof4056]

Important recording !

[@rbbonotto]

Amazing that when Alex Ross wrote 'the' 20th century music book 'The Rest Is Noise' RVW barely gets a *passing* mention.

[@noiselesspatient]

Indeed, and Cage, Berio and Ligeti are still dominating many university curricula.

[@pauldelcour]

What a great find to 'hear' RVW conducting his own work. It is extremely powerful. It's his version though. Art is something to be interpreted and many performances by others are to me equally powerful and fascinating. This one is very grim though. The old quality recording seems to add to that. Shostakovich may have depicted war in gruesome ways, but this is in some ways even gruesomer...

[@sydshrimp]

Bob I agree about his interpretation of the last movement. There is a controlled wildness that has not really been matched since, Paavo Berglund and Richard Hickox coming closest.

[@mendax1773]

Oh, I think Leonard Slatkin's performance is a pretty close approximation as well. It has to be both wild and absolutely maniacal to be effective. VW achieved both. And I believe that VW also ignored his own metronome markings in the score for the final movement. It's been thirty years since I've seen the score but I recall them to be slower than what he actually conducted.

[@dailowe]

RVW disliked Beethoven's overoptimistic 'idiom' and I can see why: in Beethoven's Fifth, Fate knocks at the door but is finally sent packing by the human spirit. Here, Fate kicks the door in, kills everyone and everything in the area, smashes the place up and stomps off, as the ceiling falls in. Quite a nihilistic Weltanschauung, dear old Ralph.

[@annakimborahpa]

Yes, it's not like the 6th where he leaves everyone wandering around quietly in stunned desolation.

[@alger3041]

We all hear a work in our manner, subjectively. I first heard it over 60 years ago, liked it on the very first hearing (and I am hardly an enthusiast of most contemporary music), and must say, this does not sound nihilistic to me at all, in the same sense that the 6th Symphony is, which ends in utter hopelessness. Not here - ti does sound manic in character, in a curious way bringing to my mind, at least in the outer movements, the 4th Symphony of, of all composers, Tchaikovsky. I realize that many will disagree.

[@martinlee5604]

... and then came the sublime 5th Symphony.

[@deconcoder]

I love 4 and 6 so much, jesus, once one or the other starts it's hard to turn them off. Dude was an absolute fireball.

[@denisehay8895]

Maybe he was able to see what would befall us in 2025 at the hands of a Marxist government.

[@ericbenjamin2908]

“We’ll gentlemen,” VW said at the end of a rehearsal of this symphony, “if that’s modern music, you may have it!” I love that he could write a piece like this and be ironic.

[@AbdelOveAllhan]

The scherzo proves what a formidable conductor RVW must have been. These tempos put LB to shame.

[@charlestimberlake5522]

Stunning performance and beautifully recorded in 1937. I like the 2nd in the Goossens/Cincinnati recording from a few years later, also the complete set with Previn. I don't think these symphonies are performed much in the US. They should be!

[@denisehay8895]

'They're not performed much in the UK either!'

[@charlestimberlake5522]

@@denisehay8895 I hope he isn't being forgotten in his own country. He was a major composer in the 20th century. Well, I think he is one of the greats.

[@denisehay8895]

@@charlestimberlake5522 Yes, I agree he's one of the greats. I've sung in the chorus of the Sea Symphony two or three times but I'm a bit past it now! But it was so unforgettable. RVW isn't forgotten but doesn't crop up on concert programmes as regularly as he deserves. Composers seem to drift in and out of favour.

[@petegarvey9224]

Phenomenal performance. A terrifying last movement. I also like Bernstein's where the harsh CBS recording adds a lot. Berglund also vg. Previn: anyone really! Just on the last note of the 2nd movement: this was the original note (F) but VW changed it to E, which is much better.

[@bobsutton4320]

This recording is the one by which all others are measured. Its only flaw is that it was recorded in 1937. If only he'd done it in 1942, when Stokowski made his broadcast conducting this piece. The fidelity there is much better. His interpretation of the final movement starting about 25:40 is magnificent. It's incredibly exciting. It's also a rather rare thing to hear a recording of Vaughan Williams conducting an orchestra because he hated the recording process available at that time.

[@ryohagitani892]

I picture in my mind the sea when I listen this symphony and it's one of the reasons for which I love this piece. RVW is a marine composer in contrast to German ones like Schubert or Bruckner. Even Wagner's Wandering Dutchman cannot make me feel the sea so vividly. Wagner's sea is a sea in a story though RVW's one is something which comes from his body. Did he predict the Tsunami of Fukushima so early?

[@ryohagitani892]

I like this symphony very much since I heard it performed by Bernstein but I like it much more now. Tempo is much faster than any other perfomance but I feel it's the appropriate one. At the end of the second movement flute gives different note from the other performances though I don't know which is better.

[@robertfrankgill5962]

Ryo Hagitani I thInk what happened was that in the manuscript RVW made a mistake and for a year or two it went unnoticed. By the time a new edition of the work came out RVW told the publishers of his error (and others!) and this was duly corrected. If that's the case then they must have still been using the 1st edition whem they recorded this. I can't remember where I read about this, however. Normally Gustav Holst used to proof-read Vaughan Williams's scores because Ralph was always making this kind of mistake. Holst died in 1934.

[@dailowe]

I like the story that he once shouted at the orchestra in a rehearsal to "for pity's sake stop taking any notice of what I'm doing!" :o)

[@unnamed_boi]

don't worry about me, just putting this analysis here for convenience I. A powerful dissonance erupts from the orchestra; two four-note ideas arise from it, at 0:07 and 0:11 respectively. (The first motif is a transposed version of the BACH theme: B flat, A, C, B, here starting on D flat.) The hostilities continue with a high-strung, lamenting theme on the violins (1:00), followed by a menacing marching episode on horns (2:15), repeated by screaming trumpets to ratchet up the drama still further. The high level of volume and tension slackens for the first time at 3:32, only to build up again towards a shattering climax (4:21) and a recapitulation of the main material. Finally, the thunderous orchestral engine runs out of steam, and the music slips into an icy, exhausted coda (5:45). II. The glacial mood continues as the slow movement begins (8:06). With its treading bass, aria-like main melody, and multiple woodwind solos, this austere movement sounds more baroque than classical. It divides neatly into two halves, with the break marked by a bassoon solo at 12:15. On two occasions (from 10:43 and 12:45, respectively) the icy calm is torn by orchestral eruptions, after which woodwind solos soothe the music back to its initial mood. A lonely flute solo (15:30) brings the music to a subdued close. III. The scherzo brings back the pounding energy of the first movement (16:41). The opening four-note figures are prominent here, providing much of the rhythmic underpinning. The lumbering trio, a fine example of fugal counterpoint, gets under way at 18:57. The main scherzo material comes back (19:52), but instead of a coda, we hear a rumbling, murmuring bridge passage from 20:56, which builds up a great head of steam, until it emerges into… IV. …the finale (21:39), announced by three crashing chords. This develops frenetically, into a kind of nightmarish military march. The second subject (22:43), brighter and less strident, comes in on violins. In a sudden strange turn, the music begins to run out of energy (23:35), like a dying battery. The first movement coda returns (24:12), like an interval of desolate sleep between episodes of frantic activity. This, however, soon gives way to an increase in tension, which rushes into the recapitulation (25:40). After further development, a loud declamation of the opening BACH theme transposition (27:04) announces the fugal coda, which sustains the high level of volume and stridency all the way to the end.

[@drjjpdc]

The minor 9th that begins the symphony is tortuous and the bouncy music that follows sounds like a devilish ball. It's easy to hear the opening of LVB 9th symphony in that 1st movement. The bridge to the finale pounds away similar to LVB 5th. I like the symphony very much. It's a bold statement in the early 1930's.

[@ulrikskouenborg7041]

@@drjjpdc 0😊

[@bobsutton4320]

Leonard Slatkin's is also pretty fiery.

[@ryohagitani892]

This symphony is a rare opposition against Beethoven. Beethoven was used by Nazis but RVW is not the case. This rendition by the composer himself pleases me far more then Bernstein's one. RVW did not use ritardando at the end of the finale unlike Bernstein's too exaggerated interpretation.　I prefer Mitropoulos' to Bernstein's one. Bernstein is a durty betrayer.

[@Kumgll]

Has not the second movement got something to do with Shostakovich?

[@martinlee5604]

Did RVW say about this symphony, "I don't like it, but it's what I meant."?

[@philippalmer2741]

"I'm not sure that I like it, but it's what I meant at the time".