Page 18 - Phil Great Collaborations March 2024 digital program book

PROGRAM NOTES

was Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), who for nearly sixty years remained
the most influential person in English music, his nine symphonies, six operas,
and succession of major choral works being widely regarded as his greatest
achievements. An avid collector of folk songs in the English countryside,
Vaughan Williams forged a new national school.
In early 1934, the British Foreign Office created the “British Committee for
Relations with Other Countries”: its goal was to promote British culture,
support English education abroad, and fight the rise of fascism. Arts figured
prominently in their early mission, and Vaughan Williams received one
of their first orchestral commissions in 1939. During World War II, they
promoted British composers by recording major compositions, including
Elgar’s oratorio-requiem Dream of Gerontius, Walton’s jazzy Belshazzar’s Feast,
and symphonies by Bax and Moeran.

Vaughan Williams’ Five Variants, Arnold Bax’s Symphony No. 7, and Arthur
Bliss’ Piano Concerto were commissioned by the British Council for British
Week at the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair. It was the first such exposition to
be based on the future, with an opening slogan of “Dawn of a New Day” and
a huge campus displaying the “world of tomorrow” in Flushing Meadows-
Corona Park in Queens. Adrian Boult led the premieres of all three works
with the New York Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall at the main musical event
of British Week, a sold-out concert on June 10, 1939. The atmosphere was
highly charged, as Franco’s Nationalists had won the Spanish Civil War
in April 1939, Japan was at war with China, and the United Kingdom and
France had just announced their support for Polish independence (following
Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, partition of Czechoslovakia, and
move into Lithuania in March 1939).

This sumptuous music was also widely played in England during the
war, beginning with Boult directing the first UK performance in Bristol
in November 1939. Vaughan Williams was at the top of his game in the
1930s, having triumphed with the choral masterpieces Dona nobis pacem
(Huddersfield, 1936) and Serenade to Music (Royal Albert Hall, 1938), and the
ballet Job and opera Riders to the Sea staged in London. A veteran of World
War I (serving in the ambulance corps during the Battle of the Somme and in
Greece), he returned to active civilian war work in 1939, serving on arts and
refugee councils and chairing the Home Office Committee for the Release of
Interned Alien Musicians.
[Vaughan Williams wrote about his Five Variants of ‘Dives and Lazarus’: “These
variants are not exact replicas of traditional tunes, but rather reminiscences of various
versions in my own collection and those of others.” – sk]

16 Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra
16 Plymouth Philharmonic Or c hestr a