Page 459 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

Carlo Kalmar/Oregon Symphony Orchestra, 2012 (Pentatone)
This performance is part of a disc entitled ‘This England’. The programme
gets off to a splendid start with a cracking performance of Elgar’s
Overture, Cockaigne, and the ‘Sea Interludes’ from Britten’s Peter Grimes are
also superbly done. The first movement of the Fifth unfolds with a calm
inevitability that is very attractive, though not without a fair amount of
intervention from the conductor, who holds back expressively at several key
points. This sounds more spontaneous to my ears than do similar effects
under certain other conductors, except for the climax of the movement –
which Vaughan Williams marks Tutta forza – where Kalmar takes a little
liberty with the pulse that might well pall after a time. He whips up a
veritable storm in the central passage, however, and the grim coda is
properly affecting. The scherzo is superb, with featherlight strings and a very
winning way with those disorientating misplaced accents. The Romanza, too,
is very fine, particularly successful at evoking that very special mood that
words will always be inadequate to describe. The opening tempo of the finale
is quite quick, underlining its relaxed, smiling nature. There is more violence
than usual in the build-up to the return of the opening music. The final pages
are very slow, but beautifully sustained, bringing a very fine performance of
this glorious work to a serene and satisfying close.

Andrew Manze/Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, 2017 (Onyx)
Andrew Manze’s tempo at the opening of the symphony ensures that the first
movement does not linger. The music unfolds steadily and patiently. The
dynamic range is wide, so you need to set the volume control a little beyond
normal in order to hear the quieter details of the scoring. Vaughan Williams
was more sparing than many composers – Elgar, for instance – with
interpretative indications, leaving some measure of freedom to the
interpreter. Here, you may like or you may not the odd moment when the
conductor presses ahead – or the opposite – without waiting for the
composer’s sanction, but there is nothing to shock. All the same, there
seems little sense of expectancy when the orchestra begins to prepare us for
the big Tutta forza passage, where I find that some of the conductor’s
expressive devices sound studied rather than spontaneous. The faster,
central passage is superbly played but the climax seems less hard won than
in other interpretations, lacking a little impact. The scherzo comes off very
well, and Manze, unlike many conductors, encourages his players to
considerable expressiveness in the lovely string passage just before the
coda. The Romanza is beautifully done, and the finale is also very successful,
properly smiling at the outset and radiantly conclusive at the close.

Michael Collins/Philharmonia Orchestra, 2019 (BIS)
The first thing that struck me about Michael Collins’s performance of the Fifth
Symphony was that the opening horn calls were too loud. But the idea,
explored in the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, that they were
intended to evoke wartime air raid sirens, can be used to justify such an
approach. The main tempo for this first movement is a fair bit slower than