Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 1 "A Sea Symphony" & Serenade to Music (Live)

Featuring

Dennis Russell Davies
Eleanor Lyons
Christopher Maltman
Joanne-Marie D’Mello
Michelle Neupert
Yongkeun Kim

Alexander Knight
MDR Sinfonieorchester
MDR Rundfunkchor
Ralph Vaughan Williams

Did you know?

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Composition History

Vaughan Williams worked on A Sea Symphony for almost seven years, originally conceiving it as a symphonic poem titled The Ocean, and it marked a turning point in his career towards large-scale choral and orchestral works.

Compositional Technique

A Sea Symphony is Vaughan Williams' longest work in the genre and is unique for its use of chorus and soloists in all movements, a novel approach at the time compared to works like Beethoven's Ninth or Mahler's Second Symphony.

Composition History

Serenade to Music was composed in 1938 for the "Golden" Jubilee Concert of conductor Sir Henry Wood, who requested a piece featuring sixteen prominent vocal soloists.

Composer Biography

At age 36, Vaughan Williams spent three months in Paris taking orchestration lessons from the younger Maurice Ravel, despite initially refusing to write a "little minuet in the style of Mozart" as Ravel's first assignment.

Composer Biography

Vaughan Williams studied composition with Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford in London, and later took private lessons with Max Bruch in Berlin.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Vaughan Williams believed a composer should not withdraw to contemplate art, but live with their contemporaries and make their art an expression of shared life, aiming to make their musical heritage familiar to their countrymen.

Composer Biography

Ralph Vaughan Williams, born in 1872, humorously claimed he was born "with a small silver spoon in his mouth," which freed him from time-consuming teaching and instrumentalist work.