October 2, 2022
PILE HIGH ON THE PLATTER:
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Sixth Symphony (Norman Lebrecht, 10/02/22, The Critic)
The English composer's fifth symphony, like Dmitri Shostakovich's seventh, was a musical turning point in the Second World War. Both exuded confidence in the ultimate victory of good over evil, offering a strategic boost to Allied confidence in the critical years of 1942-3. The Shostakovich symphony had universal impact; Vaughan Williams was of primarily English importance.
Five years passed before he brought forth another symphony and the change in tone is extreme. Writing in the privations of post-War austerity, when there was not enough to eat or heat, the national composer pushed the brass core of his orchestra to every known excess, before signing off with an epilogue of unequalled bleakness. At 75 he may have feared this would be his own epitaph, but this was not an artist who sweetened the pill or offered placebos. VW told it as it was. The sixth symphony, when done well, is as shattering as any work of its era.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 2, 2022 12:00 AM