Resplendent season’s end
A
SEA
Vaughan
the
Symphony
by
Williams
brought
Guildford
Philharmonic
Orchestra’s season to a resplendent end at the Civic Hall
on Saturday evening. And so
integral to this score was the
Philharmonic Choir that the
effect sounded more like a
single instrument than orchestral and choral forces.
- This first symphony .dates
from
the
historical/musical
1910 and
nity, both in the music and
with the words of Walt Whitman.
Other composers have written / of
the sea,
including
Delius and Debussy, but this
is
a
major
conception.
The
undulating waves, the heaving
-breast of the swell. these were
there
from
the
first
stirring
- words Behold the Sea Itself.
In one of his most translucently illuminating readings;
Vernon Handley built from
this beginning, brushing in the
myriad moods and tones. so
that the colour changes of
sea, ship and sky sailed across
our mental horizon.
Both
soloists
were
introduced in the opening moveElizabeth
Tippett
- ment.
revealed her operatic feeling
‘and - her high notes, floated
over with an especxa]lv ethereal
sound.
Peter Knapp
sang
the - baritone
line
with
purity, yet perhaps calling for
a bit more salty flavouring.
After all, the theme was not
only
ships
but -“time
and
space and death.”
In. the slow second movement
On
The
Beach, the
orchestral
quality
came
through and as Knapp and
the choir joined,
to
agree
with
it
was easy -
Whitman
that
similitude interlocks
all - dn the superbly structured scherzo of The Waves,
the choir again tode the score
A vast
buoyantly, complete with fine diminuendos. The strong male
sections now
round
off
a
robust, sensitivg group.
the harmonic tension befween
‘major and minor, the conflict
.
Harps, strings,
horns
all
introduced The Explorers in
“the teeming spiritual = darkness.”
But. from
the
word
wandering the mood was positive, the tension tightened —
despite a choral slip = somewhele
among
these
pages.
*"After the seas are all cro\%d
:
” and Handley seemed
to ignite
a deeply
' exciting
sense
of eternal
exploring
through
regions
infinite.
Which is what music and life
are all about,
The concert
opened with
the brittly brilliant cul-de-sac,
of Stravinsky’s Symphony in
Three
_
Movements, . The
G.P.O. was ranged in its full
71-stlono splendoux with tim-
pani
and
percussion
to
the
right and John Forster on the
piano at the far left.
Dating from 1945, the work
represents . in_ the ' composer’s
words “this our arduous time
of sharp and shifting events,
of despair: and hope, of continual- torments and at last,
cessation and relief.” Hence
of opposing tonalities.
The
G.P.O.,
leader
John
Ludlow, picked and pricked
its
way
stylishly
through
the broken glass fragmentation of this musical equivalent
to Auden’s poefry — urban,
ambivalent,
neurotic, thistly,
intellectual, modern, ‘splintery,
satirical, lyrlcal
Decisive
timpani,
shapely
woodwind,
eloquent
horns,
marked the first movement
with its fading string close.
After more
woodwind and
horn
distinction
in
the
cracked crystallography of the
andanite,
the
_—orchestra
returned to the tense scoops
of almost human outcries.
Thanks
to
Handley,
the
Guildford Phitharmonic
Orchestra and. Choir for a
season which has echoed the
words of Walt Whitman: “O
farther. farther, farther sail.”
And if you want to hear
Handley again this week. he
the final G.P.O.
is conducting
concert of the season at the
Festival Hall on Thursday. —