Vaughan Williams Symphony No.5 / Symphony No.6

Album review

Even if they succeed one another by only five years, Vaughan Williams’ Fifth and Sixth Symphonies—among his more impressive masterworks—couldn’t be more different from one another. The Fifth, written in the middle of the war in 1943, and dedicated to Jean Sibelius, seems to be some kind of call for peace and beauty, even in its darkest and contemplative moments. The Sixth from 1948, on the other hand, creates the impression of evoking the most grating memories of the war. Not that, of course, the composer had in any way tried to write program music, but you can only be captivated by the howling, desperate, terrifying sonorities, the impossibility to ever find any moment of tonal respite—the first movement sways between the E minor and, just beside but so distant, the F minor which comes to upset the whole. In the middle of the same movement, the saxophones—saxophones are a rarity in Vaughan Williams’ music—come to sow discord with some kind of nasty reminiscence of a sorcerer’s apprentice who has become mad… saxophones that you will hear again howling in the diabolical scherzo, that Shostakovich wouldn’t have disavowed. The last movement fizzles out completely, as if someone had suddenly blown the candle out without warning; and this all the more so that during the ten minutes it lasts, he never ever leaves the pianissimo and never finds any respite, whether melodic—the discourse wanders endlessly—or harmonic. It’s a tremendous stroke of genius. Here, this is the excellent Andrew Manze, decidedly very at ease with British music, who conducts a most inspired Liverpool Orchestra. © SM/Qobuz