Vaughan Williams Symphony no 8

 Day 150

Vaughan Williams Symphony no 8

Bernard Haitink

London Symphony Orchestra

I have mixed views about Vaughan Williams.  There are some wonderful moment, such as the opening of the Sea Symphony and the end of the 5th Symphony and the whole of the Tallis Fantasia, but I don't find that much to enjoy in some of his other pieces. I've played symphonies no 1, 2, 5 and 7 and a few other smaller pieces.  I'm tempted to think that all VW sounds the same! Not true of course but one does find the same characteristics again and again. Now in Haydn or Stravinsky , for example, I see that as a positive -the composer marking his fingerprints over music which seems on the surface to be very different, but with VW it sometime seems like resorting to clichés.  Perhaps it is just a reflection of my own musical sympathies.

I think that 8th was the only VW symphony I had not heard before. It is a late work (1956) when the composer was in his 80s. It is also the shortest of his 9 symphonies.  I had very mixed reactions. The slow movement was for me the highlight - it is scored for strings only and has echoes of the Tallis Fantasia and The Lark Ascending.  By contrast I couldn't make much sense of the second movement, which is scored for wind instruments only.  Its rather 'rum-ti-tum' style seems completely out of place here. 

The last movement uses tuned gongs - inspired by the composer hearing a performance of Turandot. I was interested to see how he used then - I have to say I was rather underwhelmed. When you think what Britten was doing with tuned percussion in The Prince of the Pagodas, written at more or less exactly the same time, VW use does seem rather old-fashioned and unadventurous. But perhaps it is just that he is just not a composer whose wavelength I can quite get onto.  I'm sure that the loss is mine.