CHSA 5001 Front.qxd 12/4/07 2:19 pm Page 1 CHSA 5001 CHANDOS SUPER AUDIO CD CHSA 5001 BOOK Colour.qxd 12/4/07 2:22 pm Page 2 ‘England and the Kingdom, Britain and the Empire, the old prides and the old devotions, glide abeam, astern, sink down upon the horizon…’ H.G. WELLS CHSA 5001 BOOK Colour.qxd 12/4/07 2:22 pm Page 4 George Butterworth (1885–1916) 1 6:15 The Lebrecht Collection The Lebrecht The Banks of Green Willow Idyll Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) world premiere recording A London Symphony (Symphony No. 2) 61:21 Original 1913 version 2 I Lento – Allegro risoluto 15:03 3 II Lento 16:14 4 III Scherzo (Nocturne): Allegro vivace – Andantino 11:04 5 IV Andante con moto – Maestoso alla marcia (quasi lento) – Allegro – Andantino ma sostenuto – Ralph Vaughan Williams Tempo primo – Allegro – Lento – Epilogue: Andante sostenuto – Lento 18:51 TT 67:43 London Symphony Orchestra Gordan Nikolitch leader Richard Hickox 5 CHSA 5001 BOOK Colour.qxd 12/4/07 2:23 pm Page 6 A London Symphony to his memory. The work H.G. Wells’s novel Tono-Bungay on the work. was finished by the end of 1913 and first Vaughan Williams had pointed to this influence performed in the Queen’s Hall in London on in a letter to Michael Kennedy in 1957. 27 March 1914, conducted by Geoffrey Toye. Tono-Bungay was written in 1909 and deals Following the loss of the full score in Germany with big issues – ambition, personal in 1914, Vaughan Williams, Butterworth, relationships, the march of science – set Geoffrey Toye and E.J. Dent reconstructed it against the background of a rapidly changing from the orchestral parts, and the first London. For Wells London was ‘a thing of performance of the reconstruction took place white and yellow and red jewels of light and on 11 February 1915 under Dan Godfrey. wonderful floods of golden illuminations and Vaughan Williams revised the symphony three stupendous and unfathomable shadows…’ The times: in 1918, 1920 and 1933, and the well- end of the novel would have appealed to known ‘Revised Edition’ was published in the Vaughan Williams’s visionary and philosophical Butterworth: The Banks of Green Willow mid-1930s. This CD presents the world nature. Wells contemplates: Vaughan Williams: A London Symphony premiere recording of the first, 1913 version. The last great movement in the London Symphony Listening to this original conception of in which the true scheme of the old order is A London Symphony is both exciting and altogether dwarfed and swallowed up… Light George Butterworth was dead – shot in the head in the early hours surprising. Exciting in that there is around after light goes down. England and the Kingdom, The Banks of Green Willow of the morning on 5 August 1916. He was twenty minutes of extra music from a time Britain and the Empire, the old prides and the old The Idyll, The Banks of Green Willow, was returning from an assault on the front line when Vaughan Williams was writing works of devotions, glide abeam, astern, sink down upon composed in 1913, the same year Vaughan near Pozières on the Somme in the shallow freshness and lyricism, including The Lark the horizon, pass – pass. The river passes – Williams completed A London Symphony. It is and broken trench which still officially bears Ascending (1914). In these original pages of London passes, England passes… a sensuous work which incorporates two his name. The Banks of Green Willow becomes A London Symphony there is much that is Vaughan Williams captures this vision of the folksongs Butterworth had collected in 1907. the more poignant as we recall the fate of its magical and poetic. Surprising in that Vaughan passing of old England in the Epilogue to The opening melody, based on the folk ballad gifted composer. Williams’s first conception of the symphony A London Symphony. This is more pronounced which gives the work its title, is simple and seems different – more mysterious, more in the original version which further beguiling. A more impassioned section leads Ralph Vaughan Williams wistful. It is obviously less taut but, through emphasises the mysteriousness and sense to the folksong ‘Green Bushes’, a beautiful A London Symphony (original version, 1913) his revisions, Vaughan Williams achieved of the unknown so well described in melody, set first for oboe and then for flute It was George Butterworth who first suggested greater structural coherence at the expense of Tono-Bungay. and harp arpeggios, which seems to distil the to Vaughan Williams that he should write an passages of tenderness, beauty and originality. No wonder many of the composer’s friends gentleness and charm of the English orchestral symphony and, after Butterworth’s This original conception of A London regretted the cuts. Sir Arnold Bax referred to countryside. Only three years later Butterworth tragic death, Vaughan Williams dedicated Symphony seems to reinforce the influence of his sadness at ‘the loss of a mysterious 6 7 CHSA 5001 BOOK Colour.qxd 12/4/07 2:23 pm Page 8 passage of strange and fascinating cacophony substantial. The development section of the Vaughan Williams, too, would have been Vaughan Williams said he preferred to with which the first version of the Scherzo Andante con moto was shortened and thirty- influenced by George Butterworth’s refer to the work as a ‘Symphony by a closed’. R.O. Morris, writing in 1920, referred nine bars were dropped at letter M. This observations on this symphony, published in Londoner’. Although he was born in the to a questioning and ‘a weariness’ in the includes a remarkable Andantino section, the Royal College of Music magazine in 1914. village of Down Ampney in Gloucestershire, original version of the work. Bernard probably the greatest loss in the revised Butterworth, in a very positive article overall, and both went to school and lived for many Herrmann felt that the deleted bars in the edition, which also briefly reappears prior to the wrote: years in Surrey, he was a Londoner at heart. slow movement removed some of ‘the most re-introduction of the Westminster chimes. Most The Finale is the longest of the four movements; He had moved into 13, Cheyne Walk in original poetic moments in the entire significantly there is much extra music for perhaps, also, it is the least satisfactory; not that Chelsea in 1905, and from here enjoyed views symphony’, whose ‘magic and beauty’ strings, woodwind and brass, pianissimo, in the there is any falling off in the interest but… there over Battersea Park and The Thames from his captured something of London which was lost Epilogue, recalling earlier themes but in a is a feeling that the composer is straining himself study. Cheyne Walk, in the years before the in the revised edition. Through this historic mysterious and remote way. to express just a little too much… First World War, was a picturesque part of recording, we can now judge for ourselves. So why did Vaughan Williams make these Writing in 1920, Vaughan Williams also London, atmospheric with an air of repose What changed and why did Vaughan changes? He undoubtedly felt that the original sought to distance himself from the idea of and seclusion. Yet within easy distance was Williams do it? The first movement was never version was too long, and he told Bernard A London Symphony as a descriptive piece. the bustle of Piccadilly, the elegance of revised in any way. In the slow movement there Herrmann that the middle of the symphony He said, ‘The music is intended to be self- Belgravia, and the more dubious area between was a short reduction in the exposition after the contained ‘some horrible modern music – awful expressive, and must stand or fall as absolute Westminster and Vauxhall Bridge once known eighth bar and, later, more significant omissions stuff’. Vaughan Williams in 1920 was music’. He described the ‘Westminster chimes’ as Tothill Fields. Here were bull-baiters, of solos for oboe, viola and horn. Much of this developing a more concise style of symphonic of the first movement and the ‘lavender cry’ in dog-fighters, fairgrounds and many a colourful is quite beautiful, with ‘folk-like’ qualities, writing which was to find expression in the slow movement as ‘accidents’. Substantial and riotous tavern. Vaughan Williams would including a lovely Elizabethan-style melody. An A Pastoral Symphony, completed in June 1921. cuts to the score to provide the work with have known such aspects of London, and their atmospheric six-bar passage for wind with There the texture is more continuous, the mood greater structural coherence strengthened the contrasting impressions are evoked in string accompaniment was deleted too, which absorbed and contemplative, and the impact work’s claims to being ‘absolute’ music. A London Symphony. was probably the cut Bernard Herrmann was understated until the emotional release of the Despite all this Vaughan Williams retained the The slow introduction presents the City referring to. There were more deletions in what fourth movement. Vaughan Williams, reflecting ‘Westminster chimes’ and in a 1925 asleep. At dawn the harp strikes the half-hour in the revised version is shown as passages on his experiences as a soldier in the Royal programme note went on to provide more of the Westminster chimes. The following K to L (pages 93 to 95). In the Scherzo Army Medical Corp, at Ecoivres, near Arras in detailed and colourful information about the Allegro risoluto section, triple forte, is all (Nocturne) an episode in B major and a second Northern France in 1916, achieves remarkable locations in London which had stimulated the hustle and bustle.