Ralph VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (1872-1958)
Symphony No.4 (1934) [34:34]
Arthur BENJAMIN (1893-1960)
Symphony (1945) [39:06]
Hallé Orchestra/John Barbirolli
BBC Symphony Orchestra/Sir John Barbirolli
rec. radio broadcasts, 30 June 1948; 1950. ADD. mono
BARBIROLLI SOCIETY SJB 1064 [73:46]
A decade apart, and straddling a world war, these two symphonies
heave with conflict and seem to smoulder among battlefield dawns.
This release is particularly noteworthy in that it preserves
the world première of the Benjamin symphony, presumably
given in Cheltenham Town Hall and the town’s music festival,
and Barbirolli’s first-ever performance of the Vaughan
Williams Fourth.
There’s a dove-grey Atlantic swell and fury to the Arthur
Benjamin symphony. If you know Benjamin only from his lighter
pieces then brace yourself. It’s a work I rate very highly
indeed and sits comfortably in the same company as Prokofiev
6, as RVW 4, as Bax 5 and as Hubert Clifford’s Symphony
- the latter on Chandos (review).
Its musical ideas and their constantly inventive treatment are
memorable. Not once does the mask slip. I can attest to this
having known this dramatic and exciting symphony since 1981
from a radio broadcast copied to me on audio-cassette by a friend
in the USA. The recovery work done by the Barbirolli Society
and Karl Miller presents this gloriously emotional and emotive
symphony and performance in the best sound I have ever heard.
You must make allowance for a constricted and sometimes strangulated
treble, a bass prone to crumble and the occasional cough. You
know what? After the first few minutes all that aural graffiti
no longer matters. Blitzkrieg-quick Barbirolli takes an unshakable
grip on you and there’s no remission. This is Barbirolli
at high noon; don’t believe me? Listen to the finale.
It rips and roars until it comes full circle with the same Atlantic
swell that opened the symphony some forty minutes earlier. Glorious.
There are modern recordings of the Benjamin Symphony from Wordsworth
(Lyrita)
and Lyndon-Gee (Marco Polo 8.223764) but neither of them smokes
and flames like this. Of these two the Lyrita is now to be preferred
if you insist on modern sound. As RVW dedicated his Fifth Symphony
to Sibelius so Benjamin dedicated his to RVW. Indeed there are
turbulent echoes of the RVW Fourth in the Benjamin.
Speaking of the RVW Fourth, while the Benjamin is as quick as
I have heard it the RVW is taken at a momentously deliberate
gait. As the liner-note reminds us Barbirolli takes five minutes
longer in 1950 than the composer did with the same orchestra
in 1937 for HMV. If Barbirolli is less breathlessly tumultuous
than the composer he certainly keeps up the tensile strength
while allowing us a more measured appreciation of the incidents
and ideas. There’s more light and air here.
The notes by Robert Matthew-Walker are predictably helpful.
There we have it: two fascinating documents of what would otherwise
have been ephemeral. The RVW has something new and different
to tell us. The incendiary and kinetic Benjamin shows us what
Barbirolli was like when the interpretative furnace burnt as
dazzlingly as Golovanov, Cantelli, Kleiber or Mravinsky.
Rob Barnett
A freshly imagined if deliberate RVW and an incendiary and kinetic
Benjamin. Barbirolli vies with Cantelli, Golovanov, Kleiber
or Mravinsky.
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