VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Symphony No. 6; Scott of the Antarctic; Coastal Command; 49th Parallel; The Story of a Flemish Farm; The Loves of Joanna Godden
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
London Symphony Orchestra/Adrian Boult; Philharmonia Orchestra/Ernest Irving; BBC Northern Orchestra/Muir Mathieson
PEARL GEM 0107 (65:13)
Vaughan Williams: War Shadows and Documentary Light
This Pearl reissue offers something precious and strange—Boult’s white-hot 1949 recording of the Sixth Symphony alongside a clutch of wartime film scores that few collectors will have encountered in their original sonic dress. The combination isn’t arbitrary. These pieces share DNA, cross-pollinate, speak to each other across the divide between concert hall and cinema screen.
The Sixth gets the lion’s share of attention, and rightly so. This was the first recording—made barely a year after the premiere, with the work’s volcanic strangeness still smoking. Boult, often caricatured as the stiff upper lip incarnate, brings genuine fury to the first movement. That “pummelling violence” the liner notes mention? It’s there in spades, but what strikes me more forcefully is the eerie calm that keeps breaking through—those modal melodies that sound like they’re being sung from some great distance, across water. The LSO plays with controlled ferocity, though the strings occasionally thin out in the highest registers (a limitation of the disc, not the reading).
The scherzo here is the original version, before RVW’s tinkering. Scholars will want this for that reason alone, though I confess I’ve never been entirely convinced the revisions were necessary. The finale—that notorious epilogue marked pianissimo throughout—emerges with chilling clarity. Yes, Holst’s “Neptune” hovers in the background, but there’s something more desolate here, more final. Bax’s Sixth Symphony also ends in hushed withdrawal, but his is all glitter and fairy-light; Vaughan Williams gives us the heat-death of the universe.
The sound Roger Beardsley has coaxed from these ancient sources is remarkable. Surface noise, certainly—this is mono from 1949—but the ticks and pops have been surgically removed without neutering the dynamic range. You can hear the hall acoustic, the weight of the timpani, the bite of the brass.
Now the film music. Here’s where things get genuinely interesting.
Scott of the Antarctic everyone knows—or thinks they do, since the music migrated into the Sinfonia Antartica. But hearing it in this context, transferred from the original Plum label 78s, is revelatory. That unidentified soprano (surely someone knows who she was?) floats above the orchestral texture like a spirit-voice, and the percussion writing—wind machine, vibraphone, all manner of exotic clangor—reminds you that RVW was perfectly capable of sonic adventurism when the occasion demanded. Ernest Irving conducts the Philharmonia with theatrical flair, perhaps too much; there are moments when restraint might have served better.
The BBC Northern Orchestra material, conducted by Muir Mathieson, varies wildly in quality. Coastal Command starts unpromisingly—that “Prelude” is rum-ti-tum indeed, generic fanfare music that could accompany newsreel footage of just about anything. But “Sunderland Goes in Close” has real tension, real atmosphere. You can almost smell the salt spray, feel the hydraulics of the flying boat’s gun turrets.
The Story of a Flemish Farm yields the disc’s secret treasure. That “Dawn Scene,” with its prominent violin solo (beautifully played, though again the soloist goes unnamed), has the kind of poignant melodic beauty RVW could spin out seemingly without effort. When the music darkens toward the climax, prophesying death in occupied Belgium, the effect is genuinely moving. And yes, musical “chips” from this score did find their way into the Sixth Symphony—listen to the first movement’s lyrical second subject and you’ll hear the family resemblance.
The epilogue from 49th Parallel is another matter entirely. This broad, sweeping theme—meant to evoke Canada’s vastness, I suppose—reaches the same heights as the Fifth Symphony’s best pages. It’s noble music, unashamed of its romantic gestures, and the LSO under Mathieson plays it with conviction.
The Loves of Joanna Godden I’m less enthusiastic about. Much of it sits in a middle ground—competent, atmospheric, but not especially memorable. The “Martin drowned at Dungeness” and “Burning of the sheep” sections have more character, more bite. That comparison to Dickensian marshland in the liner notes isn’t far off the mark; there’s something appropriately desolate about this music, though whether it serves the film or stands on its own is another question.
Lewis Foreman and Roger Beardsley provide distinguished notes, placing everything in context without unnecessary hand-holding. They understand their audience.
So who needs this disc? Vaughan Williams completists, certainly—you won’t find these film scores gathered together anywhere else in such vivid period sound. The Sixth Symphony is available in several later recordings (Boult’s own stereo remake, Previn, Haitink), but this 1949 account has a raw immediacy the others lack. It’s history speaking—the composer’s voice when the work was new and its meanings still unsettled.
The rest of us? If you care about British music’s documentary tradition, about how a great composer functioned when the cameras were rolling and the nation needed anthems… yes. This belongs on your shelf.
Pearl GEM 0107 [65:13]
