Synopsis

At Queen’s Hall in London, on today’s date in 1920, conductor Albert Coates led the premiere of the revised version of A London Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams.

A longer version of this symphony had premiered six years earlier, and Vaughan Williams would continue to tinker with this work, on and off, for decades.

“The London Symphony is past mending,” wrote Vaughan Williams in 1951, “though with all its faults I love it still; indeed, it is my favorite.”

For most music lovers, Vaughan Williams means English folk tunes or hymns woven into lush works for strings, or musical pictures of English countryside. But it was a city view that inspired his London Symphony, described by Vaughan Williams himself as “a good view of the river and a bridge and three great electric-light chimneys and a sunset.”

In fact, you could call Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 2 a “sunset” symphony. Its final pages were inspired by an H.G. Wells novel describing a night passage on the Thames to the open sea: “To run down the Thames so is to run one’s hand over the pages in the book of England from end to end ... The river passes ... London passes … England passes …“

Music Played in Today's Program

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): Symphony No. 2 (A London Symphony); London Symphony Orchestra; Richard Hickox, conductor; Chanos 9902