The Sea Symphony CD Review
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Performs Ralph Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 1
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra brings us a work that first ushered Ralph Vaughan Williams into the public eye: The Sea Symphony.
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) reinstated English music as a national identity. Though he studied under continental masters (such as Ravel), he turned to the heritage and tradition of his native England in order to find his own musical voice. But he drew from all aspects of England's cultural past: not only did Vaughan Williams arrange hymns and folk songs, he also paid tribute to one of England's greatest Renaissance composers, Thomas Tallis.
Ralph Vaughan Williams was also indebted to the American Romantic poet Walt Whitman, setting several of Whitman's texts to music. One of Vaughan Williams' largest works to make use of Whitman's poems is Symphony No. 1 (The Sea Symphony). It was this work, along with Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, that first attracted public attention.
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, directed by Robert Spano, collaborates with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus, directed by Norman MacKenzie, on this choral symphony that relates the tumultuous moods of the sea.
The first movement, "A Song for All Seas, All Ships," opens with a fanfare in the horns, a majestic and somewhat ominous introduction. The white sails of the ships, by contrast, are depicted by lighter, more fragile melodies in the strings. Brett Palegato performs the powerful baritone solo in the middle section. The seas' moods appear to be capricious: sea shanty tunes and hymn-like choruses are interspersed by more frantic timpani episodes that imitate the wind and spray of the surf. Christine Goerke's soprano voice carries a heavier timbre, but the haunting, boys' choir-influenced chorus behind her pushes the music toward the transcendent. The first movement concludes in hushed anticipation, a faint echo of the opening text.
The second movement, "On the Beach At Night, Alone," explores themes of eternity and vastness, with the sea and the sky as metaphors of endless enormity. The music, a constant but understated current, echoes this theme of timelessness.
The third movement, in typical symphony form, is a scherzo. Although arranged roughly in ternary form (ABA) like a scherzo, Vaughan Williams infuses much pictorial drama into this movement. The sea storms and rages, before breaking into the triumphant "Trio" section hymn, and returns once again to tumult.
The final and longest movement, "The Explorers," presents a history of the world that moves from primordial awe (a hushed chorus that recounts the creation story according to Genesis) to post-Eden anxiety and "wandering" to order (represented by the scientists and engineers) to mysticism (represented by the poets). The soul bears an affinity to the transcendence of the natural elements (such as the sea), and the chorus ends with a call for adventure and exploration, fading away with the ship that disappears over the horizon.
