Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 2 & Serenade to Music

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[The London Symphony shows] careful attention to detail, rhythmic energy, scrupulous balance and a fine ear for the inner life of the more animated music and real poetry in inward-looking passages...The... — International Record Review, May 2012 More…

Release Date: 5th Mar 2012
Catalogue No: HMU807567
Label: Harmonia Mundi
Length: 55 minutes

Vaughan Williams: A London Symphony (Symphony No. 2) in G Major

Work length42:50

$5.40

$9.10

$11.20

Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Christopher Seaman

I. Lento - Allegro risoluto

Track length13:28

$1.60

$2.60

$3.20

II. Lento

Track length9:22

$1.20

$1.95

$2.40

III. Scherzo (Nocturne)

Track length8:02

$1.20

$1.95

$2.40

IV. Finale (Andante con moto - Maestoso alla marcia - Lento - Epilogue)

Track length11:58

$1.40

$2.60

$3.20

Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music

Work length12:32

$1.40

$2.60

$3.20

Christopher Seaman, Juliana Athayde, Mercury Opera Rochester, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra

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“As a young conductor I received a great deal of support and encouragement from Sir Adrian Boult, who had been a friend of Vaughan Williams and one of his favourite interpreters. He and his wife regularly listened to my BBC broadcasts and often wrote with comments and suggestions. One of my most treasured possessions is the following letter, written after a broadcast of “A London Symphony,” a work often associated with Boult himself.”

CHRISTOPHER SEAMAN

To mark the close of an outstanding 13-season tenure as Music Director of the Rochester Philharmonic, Christopher Seaman leads his orchestra in a programme of music which he holds especially dear: Vaughan Williams' ‘London' Symphony and the ‘Serenade to Music', the latter with singers from Mercury Opera Rochester. Henry Wood commissioned Vaughan Williams to compose the Serenade to be premiered at a concert marking Wood’s 50th anniversary on the podium. Vaughan Williams dedicated it to Sir Henry, “in grateful recognition of his services to music.”

This recording presents it in its original form – for 16 solo singers and orchestra, as Wood requested. In her biography of Vaughan Williams, his second wife, Ursula, recalled the period of the Serenade’s premiere, when Europe was once again teetering perilously on the brink of war. “But on that evening, in the Serenade,” she wrote, “night in the garden at Belmont laid its balm of starry words and moonlit music on the audience gathered to celebrate the man whose work had meant so much to musicians and public alike during the last 50 years.”

Reviews

May 2012

[The London Symphony shows] careful attention to detail, rhythmic energy, scrupulous balance and a fine ear for the inner life of the more animated music and real poetry in inward-looking passages...The Serenade to Music is also most sensitively done...the whole performance is conveyed with enormous affection...Serious Vaughan Williams collectors will surely want to hear this admirable new recording

18th March 2012

The fruitful partnership here of British conductor Christopher Seaman and his American orchestra (after 13 years as music director Seaman is now Rochester Philharmonic's conductor laureate) offers much gleam, warmth and vitality, if not always the greatest subtlety.

Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 2 & Serenade to Music

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