Vaughan Williams Symphonies 7 "Antartica" & 9 : Manze, RLPO

Andrew Manze's  Ralph Vaughan Willims series with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra with Onyx continues with Symphony no 7 "Antartica" and Symphony no 9.  Manze 's Antartica includes short superscriptions (spoken by Timothy West) before each section, though the composer had meant them to be read silently.  This may drive some apoplectic with rage, but this is nothing new.  In 1954, Sir Adrian Boult set a precedent, employing Sir John Gielgud.  Though Vaughan Williams  had not intended to have the quotations spoken aloud in performance, he went along with Boult's decision.  Some years later, André Previn followed suit, with Sir Ralph Richardson.  It is also highly relevant that the symphony was created in the years after the film Scott of the Antarctic (1948), starring John Mills, and James Robertson Justice, directed by Charles Frend, for which Vaughan Williams wrote the soundtrack.  It is  worth watching the film (via the British Film Institute), because it is a classic of British cinema at a time when the British film industry was in its heyday.

Scott and his companions struggle against overwhelming forces. They are alone, on a vast continent, at the mercy of forces beyond their control.  Long sequences are shot without dialogue, focussing on the vast, empty landscape as expressed through the music as if  Nature itself  had been given voice. The colours are muted : the whiteness of snow, the darkness of night, intensifying the bleakness. The characters are loosely sketched, and Scott's team of dogs feature frequently.. In ths vast landscape, mortals count for very little.  Effectively the film "is" music, a tone poem with visuals and occasional moments of speech.  The sky will not fall if the symphony is heard with text,  since there are other opportunities to hear the purely orchestral version, and it does us good to remember that without the film, the symphony might not exist.  In any case, if a listener cannot focus on the music, the fault lies with the listener, since this is mighty fine music indeed.

A well-paced Prelude, the pulse suggesting a slow, purposeful trek in difficult terrain. The orchestra wells up, at once ominous and majestic, spotlit by cymbals before proceeding again: The soprano (Rowan Pierce) heads the wordless chorus, eerily enticing the strugglers forward. In the strings and percussion, there are evocations of winds and swirling snow. In the austere later sections, textures open out, suggesting open horizons: trumpets calling forth as the movement enters a final, expansive crescendo.  In "Landscape", the lento movement, Manze's textures are lean, emphasizing the contrast that is to come when the organ enters,  ("Ye ice falls !"), a baleful reminder of what the explorers are up against.  As the sounds fade, the Intermezzo is introduced by a short sentence. In the Epilogue the value of quotation proves itself. Scott is dead,  forced into silence, but his words live on.  "I do not regret this journey; we took risks, we knew we took them, things have come out against us, therefore we have no cause for complaint."  One could blank these words out, but to ignore them would diminish emotional impact.

Vaughan Williams's final symphony, Symphony no 9,  receives an almost elegaic reading from Manze which brings out the darker undercurrents beneath the surface associations with Hardy and Wessex. Tess of the d'Urbervilles wasn't pastoral romance, but tragedy.  Against the darkness of this performance, the clarinet and violin sound clean and poignant. In the scherzo, the saxophone trio are appropriately jarring and discordant : the "joke" here is malevolent.  The Finale isn't tranquil so much as suppressed.