Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 8

Release Date: 3rd Oct 2011
Catalogue No: SJB1055
Label: Barbirolli Society

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Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 8 in D minor

(dedicated to Sir John Barbirolli) Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 2 May 1956 – BBC BROADCAST OF THE WORLD PREMIERE
Hallé Orchestra & London Symphony Orchestra
Sir John Barbirolli

Vaughan Williams: The Wasps Overture

Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 16 June 1953
Hallé Orchestra & London Symphony Orchestra
Sir John Barbirolli

Vaughan Williams: Tuba Concerto in F minor

Kingsway Hall, London, 14 June 1954
Philip Catelinet (tuba)
Hallé Orchestra & London Symphony Orchestra
Sir John Barbirolli

Vaughan Williams: Five Variants of ‘Dives and Lazarus'

Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 31 December 1953
Hallé Orchestra & London Symphony Orchestra
Sir John Barbirolli

Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on Greensleeves

(arr. Greaves) Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 5 January 1954
Hallé Orchestra & London Symphony Orchestra
Sir John Barbirolli

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Vaughan Williams – Symphony No.8 – ‘Live’ Recording Of The First Performance The Symphony No.8 was dedicated to Sir John Barbirolli, and, as with the ‘Antartica’ premiere, the first performance was remarkably fine, exciting the 83-year-old composer to write on the score ‘For Glorious John, with love and admiration from Ralph’.

Perhaps the composer was somewhat uncertain regarding several aspects of the new work: at a rehearsal of the symphony, in February 1956, he approached the trumpets and asked ‘Is that all right for you? I haven’t written anything too difficult for you?’ ‘It’s all right, Dr Vaughan Williams,’ came the reply, ‘there’s nothing we can’t manage.’ Thankfully, we can hear on this preserved recording of the premiere, just what a magnificent first performance the work was given. Less than seven weeks later, Barbirolli and the Hallé inaugurated their new Pye Records contract with the first recording of the Symphony (available on SJB1021).

Vaughan Williams’s Tuba Concerto is a magnificent composition – easily the finest such Concerto ever written; the recorded HMV performance, in this collection, is outstandingly good, but the work, fine as it is, does not seem to have inspired composers to write further for the genre, which has meant that the music has tended to be unjustly ignored. A similar fate has befallen another such work by Vaughan Williams – the Five Variants on ‘Dives and Lazarus’, composed for harp and string orchestra in 1939. The collection of his music on this CD demonstrates aspects not only of the composer but of the profound grasp of ‘Glorious John’ in Vaughan Williams’s varied means of expression, for not all conductors encompass the composer’s range as Barbirolli was able to do. Less challenging in their demands are two of Vaughan Williams’s best-known shorter orchestral works – the Overture to ‘The Wasps’ and the Fantasia on ‘Greensleeves’. All these recordings offer a lasting testimony to Barbirolli's total mastery as one of the greatest conductors Britain has ever produced.

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