Search - Vaughan Williams, Robert Spano, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra :: Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 5/Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

RVW's 5th + Spano + Atlanta = Such Music, of Immortal Soul

Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 05/02/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This super audio disc in multi-channel splendor is a fine thing.



Briefly, the disc starts off with the choir intoning the old Tallis hymn setting upon whose melody the RVW Tallis Fantasia is built.



Then we get the full fantasia proper, scored for a kaleidoscope of strings. Spano's interpretive approach is colorful, luscious, forward-moving, and above all, folk-lorico. He lets the strings drench, paint, reflect myriad lights bright and soft, and overflow the harmonic banks, just as much as this great streaming flood of musical fantasy passes through more typical RVW moments of modal mystery and meditation. Whew. Very high calorie, then.



Then the disc leads us right into the wartime depths of RVW's Fifth Symphony. Premiered in a bomb shelter in London during the blitz of World War II, this symphony startled its first listening audience with sounds of profound calm and lyricism. Yes, something in the constantly shifting modal harmonies throughout all four movements manages to suggest that there are dark things, indeed, that go bump in the British night. To protect children from the bombing, they had been moved into the countryside, and this massive displacement offered John Bowlby a naturalistic opportunity to study the development of childhood attachment, affected by the vicissitudes of separation and change and loss. To hear the unease in this symphony's music, you would infer that pretty much everybody felt what the children must have been feeling, somehow. And, so turned to the wider and deeper realms that make us more human than bombs or separations or displacements per se. Much of the work's materials derive from or relate to the music RVW had written into his only stage work, an unusual hybrid of opera-pageant, based on John Bunyan's famous devotional book, Pilgrim's Progress.



Like Hindemith's Mathis der Maler Symphonie, RVW's fifth reworks the musical materials, bringing out their harmonic form and expanding at greater length on their capacities for narrative. Many listeners cannot avoid hearing a persistent spiritual sense of inner mystical vitalities in this symphony, despite the documented biographical fact that RVW was, as his second wife put it, a cheerful agnostic.



Again, Spano and band play the fifth symphony with great grip and gusto, folk-lorico. This approach just misses the four-square sense of Elizabethan gravitas which, say, Sir Adrian Boult brings to RVW - but there is something else, something typically called North American in what remains. Wide open, feelingful, colorful - younger and pioneering on open prairie high plains, with Nature spectacles like the Rocky Mountains or the Grand Canyon for cathedral close.



Then this disc wraps up with the wonderful RVW setting of Shakespeare, Serenade to Music. Originally, it was written to be a once-in-a-lifetime concert piece for sixteen solo singers - all of whom at its premier performance had been associated in some way or other with RVW's musical career. Spano leads the choral version, enhanced by four mixed soloists, SATB. RVW himself authorized this alternative, though when sixteen gifted soloists are available, the original vision holds its singular place, aloft.



All concerned match their music to their exalted text. One just barely misses the gaggle of sixteen original soloists, and the point is made beautifully, musical. Such harmonies are truly in immortal souls.



Highly recommended. Another show of just how good super audio and five (or five point one) channels can be for music, and not just explosions and car crashes in the action movie genre. I'm not tossing out my older CD's of Sir Adrian Boult or Sir John Barbirolli, or even Leonard Slatkin with the Philharmonia, in this symphony. But I'm adding this disc to the fav shelf, no doubts."

Other-Worldly Pleasure

Karl W. Nehring | Ostrander, OH USA | 07/07/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is about as close to a perfect recording as earthly possible. The program opens with the chorus singing the theme by Thomas Tallis that gave rise to the beloved Fantasia by Vaughan Williams. Wonderful, wonderful music.



But there's more. Spano and his Atlanta forces then provide a thoughtful, moving rendition of the great Symphony No. 5, a work of quiet power that never fails to stir the soul. Then, to round things out, the chorus rejoins the orchestra for a lovely rendition of the gorgeous Serenade to Music.



Telarc has outdone itself this time. With more than 70 minutes of such beautiful music in such full-bodied sound, this recording delivers other-worldly pleasure to both the audiophile and the music lover."

Atmosphere and poise in this rendition.......

John Ashford | Albany Western Australia | 02/09/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Vaughan Williams composed works which Anglophiles can readily relate to, supported as they are by English folk music themes, medieval refrains and particularly 'English' musical structures such as early Middle English psalms and chorales. I first heard this recording on Australia's ABC Classical FM, and the presenter echoed my immediately favourable impression, commenting positively on the sensitive interpretation offered by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. The Fantasia is played in a reverent and very integrated fashion, with superb tension. I own earlier versions of this work, and can report that this playing is both atmospheric and poised by comparison. It is especially pleasing to see it coupled with the Tallis piece "Why Fum'th in Fight?', sung so delicately by the orchestra's chamber chorus and offering a prelude thereby to the Fantasia itself. The recording is well complemented by the Symphony no.5 in D major which serves as a further offering of insight into this composer's music. The Hybrid multi-channel CD recording quality is transparent and very well defined, and should amply reward listeners with SACD players."