VAUGHAN WILLIAMS A Sea Symphony
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Ralph Vaughan Williams
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Hallé
Magazine Review Date: AW2015
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 70
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: CDHLL7542
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Symphony No. 1, '(A) Sea Symphony' |
Ralph Vaughan Williams, Composer
Ad Solem Hallé Choir Hallé Orchestra Hallé Youth Choir Katherine Broderick, Soprano Mark Elder, Conductor Ralph Vaughan Williams, Composer Roderick Williams, Baritone Schola Cantorum |
Author: Andrew Achenbach
As for the soloists, baritone Roderick Williams is on customarily refulgent and intelligent form; soprano Katherine Broderick, too, sings with heaps of passion and drama, her thrilling top B towards the end of the first movement riding the massive swell in a way that even recalls Dame Isobel Baillie on Boult’s classic (and still unassailable) 1953 Decca recording. The superbly honed choral and orchestral contribution surely testifies to many hours of painstaking preparation, and Steve Portnoi’s Bridgewater Hall production (taken from a combination of rehearsals and a concert in March 2014) accommodates the intrepidly wide range of dynamic with ease.
Borne as it is on virtually as irresistible a symphonic current as the mono Boult, Handley (EMI, 2/89) and Haitink (1/90), Elder’s is the most satisfying Sea Symphony I’ve encountered in many a moon, and no one collecting his RVW symphony cycle with the Hallé need have any qualms acquiring it.
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