DSO guest conductor Mark Wigglesworth acknowledging the applause at the conclusion of Vaughan Williams’ fifth symphony (screen shot from the video being discussed)
After last week’s disappointment with live-streamed chamber music performed by members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO), I decided to return to DSO Replay to revisit the musicians’ “sweet spot” of orchestral performances. Responding to an “invitation” through electronic mail, I chose to visit the Web page for Ralph Vaughan William’s fifth symphony in D major led by guest conductor Mark Wigglesworth. Curiously, this happens to be the only Vaughan Williams symphony that I have experienced in a concert performance, somewhat ironic because I treasure the library of recordings of this composer’s music that I have accumulated over the years.
Equally ironic was my dissatisfaction with that concert performance. It took place in Carnegie Hall in the fall of 1981, shortly after I began working at the Schlumberger-Doll Research Laboratory in Ridgefield, Connecticut. I remember inviting a colleague, who had just started her new job at Bell Telephone Laboratories, to join me. She had never previously heard a Vaughan Williams symphony and was captivated by the performance, given by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra led by its Music Director André Previn. I did not want to dampen her spirits; but, shortly thereafter, I purchased an album of a performance conducted by Adrian Boult and gave it to her at our next encounter. I told her that she deserved a better account of the music (and she seemed to appreciate the gesture)!
Wigglesworth definitely brought such a “better account” to the DSO podium. Musically, this was a time when Vaughan Williams was frustrated with progress on his The Pilgrim’s Progress opera; and he turned to that score for many of his themes. More interesting is that he worked on this symphony during World War II, very much a time of crisis for England. Nevertheless, there is a serenity that prevails across the symphony’s four movements that could be called “pastoral” were it not for the fact that the adjective had already been assigned to the composer’s third symphony.
Much of that serenity is due to Vaughan Williams’ scrupulous use of his instrumental resources. Winds and strings dominate the opening, and it is not until relatively late in the first movement that brass instruments make their first appearance. Watching the video I was particularly struck by the physical distance that separated the brass players from the rest of the ensemble. Vaughan Williams never intended them to sound intrusive, and Wigglesworth’s positioning probably resulted in improving the overall balancing of sonorities. (I say “probably” because listening to the video meant listening to the results of a mixing board!) Similarly, the timpani does not appear until a later movement (the third, if I am not mistaken).
Unfortunately, Wigglesworth’s keen sense of how activity has been meticulously distributed across the instruments by the composer was undermined by the video direction. The first appearance of the brass in the first section is a significant rhetorical moment, yet the video director did not bother to call attention to that moment by showing the brass. Indeed, there were too many occasions during which the images were almost counterproductive to the listening experience. The good news was that Wigglesworth managed the balance of his players well enough that the ears could compensative for what the eyes were missing.
Sadly, this video seems to be the only performance of Vaughan Williams in the DSO Replay archives. Just as sadly, I realize that I have yet to write about a concert performance of that composer’s music on this site. (Things are somewhat better when it comes to recordings.) My only experience with Wigglesworth conducting in San Francisco was his visit to Davies Symphony Hall in December of 2008, when the guest soloist for the San Francisco Symphony was Lang Lang playing Frédéric Chopin's first (Opus 11) piano concerto in E minor and the rest of the program was devoted to orchestral excerpts from operas by Richard Wagner. Vaughan Williams deserves a better shake in this town!
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