Vaughan Williams enthusiasts
owe an increasing debt of gratitude
to Stephen Hogger of Chandos Records;
the man who was instrumental in the
realisation on CD of the superb original
version of the London Symphony
is now responsible for two volumes of
film music. With several further scores
to be explored it is to be hoped that
this latest volume will not be the last.
The chief interest
in
volume one was in the first complete
recording of the incidental music from
Scott of the Antarctic. This
included a good deal of music that did
not subsequently find its way into the
Sinfonia Antarctica. The other
substantial score on volume one, Coastal
Command, had already been recorded
on a Marco Polo disc along with the
concert suite Muir Mathieson assembled
from VW’s score for the 1955 British
Transport Commission documentary film,
The England of Elizabeth.
Going back further than this many will
no doubt be familiar with André
Previn’s recording of the Elizabeth
suite, originally coupled on vinyl with
the Ninth Symphony on
RCA Victor Red Seal (when the Ninth
Symphony was subsequently re-released
on CD the coupling changed to the Sixth
Symphony). This first recording
of the complete score, extending to
nearly twenty-five minutes worth of
music, is therefore most welcome. Of
greatest interest however is the premiere
recording of the complete incidental
music from the 49th Parallel.
Nearly forty minutes of music, most
of which is unknown to non-film buffs,
with the exception of the noble and
often heard Prelude.
At the age of sixty-eight,
the 49th Parallel
was VW’s first foray into film music.
Encouraged by Muir Mathieson, the director
of music for the Ministry of Information,
he took to writing for the screen with
both enthusiasm and skill, a demonstration
of the alert and enquiring mind he retained
until his death. Shot partly in Canada
the film boasted a cast of stars including
Leslie Howard, Laurence Olivier and
Glynis Johns. It told the story of the
crew of a stranded U-boat who attempt
to cross Canada in the hope of crossing
the 49th Parallel
into the then neutral United States.
As the director stated, the aim of the
film was as much to do with propaganda
as anything else, the intention being
to "scare the pants of the Americans
and bring them into the war sooner".
Much of the music is concerned with
the characters the Germans meet during
their journey including a French-Canadian
trapper, native Indians, a Canadian
soldier who challenges the German commander
and an immigrant group of German Hutterites.
Following the initial Prelude
is a Prologue of eleven glorious
minutes. Providing an introduction to
a number of the incidental themes used
later, the music will be an unadulterated
joy to lovers of Vaughan Williams. It
passes through pastoral depictions of
the Canadian scenery and rugged passages
of exhilarating, blazing brass captured
thrillingly by the BBC Philharmonic
and the Chandos engineers. Try from
around 4:08 for quintessential VW where
a chromatically rolling motif leads
into a wonderful brass apotheosis. As
Michael Kennedy points out in his useful
booklet notes the music is all the more
fascinating for the occasional hints
of the Fifth Symphony, which
the composer was working on at around
the same time. Inevitably, the music
becomes somewhat more fragmented as
the score progresses yet there are still
sections of notable if fleeting substance.
A "control room alert" in
"galumphing" scherzo mode,
echoes of the Lento from the
London Symphony heralding the
Death of Kühnecke, a joyously rollicking
celebration of the Hutterite Wheat harvest
and perhaps the most memorable of all
the later sections, a Nazi March
darkly underpinned with appropriately
sinister hues. Out of sequence with
the running order of the film and preceding
the reprise of the Prelude that
forms the closing titles is a brief
section entitled Nazis on the run
and The Lake in the Mountains,
the latter having been published as
a rare VW piano solo of the same name
in 1947.
The England of Elizabeth
dates to the last three years of VW’s
life yet anyone familiar with the Mathieson
suite will know that the remarkable
vitality of the melodic inspiration
is as strong as at any point during
the composer’s career. At the time of
its composition Vaughan Williams was
in the throes of completing the Eighth
Symphony whilst the Ninth Symphony
was evidently already on his mind. Although
divided into five clear movements these
can be broken down into numerous sections
to which Vaughan Williams gave titles
charting the course of the film. As
Stephen Hogger correctly points out
however, the music is best listened
to as a complete entity. Much of the
material of the substantial first movement
is well known from the Mathieson suite:
the fanfare-like trumpet melody that
introduces sections that pass through
a street scene, the Elizabethan countryside,
a portrait of Elizabeth herself, Hatfield,
Tintern and Kings College, Cambridge.
There is a good deal that is memorable
including the variant of the main trumpet
theme, atmospherically transformed at
6:45 to be followed by a choral evocation
of Kings College. Echoes of the Eighth
Symphony permeate the opening of
the second movement, which has a folk-like
dance heard on solo violin at its centre.
The gloriously beautiful opening of
the third movement depicting Stratford-upon-Avon
also charts a number of other local
Warwickshire sights including the river
Avon itself and Charlecote Deer Park.
There are also several passages that
are less familiar; they do not feature
in the Mathieson suite. The final movement
opens with the familiar melody from
the Sea Symphony that was soon
to be further used as the flügel
horn solo in the second movement of
the Ninth Symphony. The final
episode returns to the very opening
with a reprise of the trumpet call-to-arms.
Of less interest than
its partners on the grounds of familiarity
is the score for the ten-minute public
information film, The Dim Little
Island. Heard here in its entirety,
the music is immediately recognisable
as a reworking of the Five Variants
of Dives and Lazarus with
the addition of a brief prelude. To
this is added a solo vocal rendition
of the melody, here sung by tenor Martin
Hindmarsh. Rumon Gamba’s reading refreshingly
eschews over-sentimentality whilst still
allowing beautifully sonorous sounds
from the strings of the BBC Phil. Indeed,
the orchestra are in fine form throughout
the recording aided by customarily vivid
sound from the Chandos engineers.
The fact that many
of VW’s film scores reflect, to a degree,
the particular symphony or other major
work he was occupied with at the time
in no way detracts from the quality
or inspiration of the music. Indeed,
it is fascinating to hear echoes of
earlier symphonies in these scores alongside
ideas formulating for the Eighth and
Ninth Symphonies. Above all however,
it is clear that the composer treated
his work for film with no less attention
than he would afford a piece on a larger
scale. It is entirely deserving that
his richly rewarding work in this medium
is committed to disc.
Christopher Thomas
Emily Gray (soprano);Martin Hindmarsh (tenor)
