Vaughan Williams ‘A Sea Symphony’
Usher Hall, 14/8/25
London Symphony Orchestra, Antonio Pappano conductor, Edinburgh Festival Chorus, James Grossmith chorus director, Vilde Frang violin, Natalya Romaniw soprano, Will Liverman baritone
Vaughan Williams’ 1909 first symphony, his ‘Sea Symphony’ is an enormous work in its aspiration and execution. It receives its best possible realisation tonight by Antonio Pappano, who’s shown himself a master of large scale opera by Wagner and Puccini. With the London Symphony Orchestra on the second concert of their 2025 EIF residency and the fearless Edinburgh Festival Chorus (director James Grossmith) he presents a performance which shakes the proverbial rafters of the Usher Hall!
The concert begins with Elizabeth Maconchy’s 1951 ‘Nocturne’, an unexpectedly vivid work which breaks free from its gentle harp and strings opening into a whole-hearted conclusion with timpani and brass. Norwegian violinist Vilda Frang is on top form in Korngold’s 1945 Violin Concerto, a return to the serious music which he’d eschewed during the war. The influence of his Hollywood film scores pervade the concerto, especially in the plush violin and woodwind sounds which underpin Frang’s delicate high melodic line in the second movement ‘Romanze’. She and the orchestra tear into the allegro assai vivace third movement, where the cellos, placed centrally onstage and the double basses form the bottom layer of the orchestration, Frang’s rapid, elusively syncopated violin seeming to challenge the percussive pizzicato. Later, xylophones, and even a piccolo bird-song are added to the mix. Vilde Frang’s impressive performance is greeted by cheers.
The ‘Sea Symphony’ sets words from Walt Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’, an influential text in Britain as well as the USA – it was issued in the 1940s to service personnel to remind them of the America they were fighting for. The poems Williams selects are about the sea in all its moods, the magnificent ships and the lives of those who sail in them. A brass fanfare precedes a mighty choral outburst ‘Behold the Sea itself’, setting the mood for the rest of the first movement, ‘A Song for All Seas, All Ships,’ which finds interesting rhythms in Whitman’s free verse. The metaphor of a massive ship dominates this part of the work, and is reflected in the majestic, slow-moving chorus and bold orchestration. In contrast Whitman’s word-painting of a cruel sea in the third movement ‘Scherzo’ – “whistling winds”, waves “bubbling” and “gurgling”, the “whirling current” - inspires the piccolo shrieks, the quickly surging orchestra and a complex choral counterpoint.
Although the two soloists often have to sing with the chorus and use their powerful voices and excellent diction to cut through the sounds behind them, they also at times provide a calmer commentary. Will Liverman’s secure baritone excels in the second movement ‘On the beach at night alone’, while Natalya Romaniw’s opening lines “Flaunt out, O sea” sit perfectly in her high soprano. Their final movement duet performs the tricky role of explaining the Deist philosophy “O thou transcendent” – Whitman ’s beliefs seem to concur with Williams’ - and it contains some of the most lyrical writing for voice in the work.
This movement, ‘Exploration’, based on Whitman’s poem, ‘Passage to India’ (the source of E M Forster’s title) “sails” to exotic eastern lands. Despite the sailors’ ambition to “risk the ship ourselves and all’, calmer waters are eventually reached, though underneath, and unexpectedly, the final low eerie notes suggest, something may be lurking…
A triumph! The LSO, the Festival Chorus and Antonio Pappano is enthusiastically applauded.
