Photo, BBC/Chris Christodoulou

REVIEWED FROM LIVE RELAY ON BBC RADIO 3

Friday, September 4, 2026

Royal Albert Hall, London

The implication had been that Vaughan Williams’s Ninth Symphony, his farewell to the genre, is rare enough for this Prom to not be missed. Well, fans of VW’s music wouldn’t/couldn’t, or needed to be pushed, and anyway this annual series of concerts has done okay including it: 1958, Sargent, who had conducted the premiere (RFH) in the April (that year also finding VW9 performed in North America by Barbirolli, Steinberg and Stokowski, the latter below), Sargent including it at the Proms again in ’59 and ’60. Then a four-decade break until 1999 when Leonard Slatkin conducted it, followed by Andrew Davis and John Wilson. A goodly number of recordings, too, begun by Boult (and including his remake, both powerful essentials), Slatkin, Davis, Previn, Handley, Brabbins, Pappano, and others. The composer rather disowned references to Stonehenge and Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, the score, including a flugelhorn and three saxophones (there’s a single sax in the Sixth), was underestimated at its premiere (only Michael Kennedy, among the first-time commentators, seemed to recognise its greatness), an enigmatic yet passionate work, distinctly coloured, that Janus-like seems to be retrospective and travel in new directions, stridently and luminously orchestrated, music that communicates overtly and with deep expression that looks beyond what we know (the composer in his mid-eighties) embracing a scintillating Scherzo (in which the saxes turn up), the final movement worked to a painful climax and a long-held radiant dissolve, all fully appreciated by Andrew Manze (how he relished the glorious melody of the Finale) and he has recorded all of Vaughan Williams’s Symphonies, and Job, with the Liverpool Phil for Onyx. Their experience in this music showed throughout this (quite measured) thirty-eight-minute performance.

The concert opened with VW’s Tallis Fantasia (1910), which stole in magically and with keen anticipation, sensitively sounded and shaped, an inner-lit repose shared between the main string orchestra, the second, smaller, group and the quartet, charted inexorably by Manze to an ecstatic climax, the Liverpool Phil strings in full bloom, also capable of under-the-radar pianissimos. The breadth Manze afforded this Tallis Fantasia reminded of my first recording of it, Morton Gould’s (below).

Something new, borrowed and blue, Carmel Smickersgill’s A Brick Thrown with Love, “exploring resilience in the face of tragedy”. Not sure that came across, more wacky, playful, and inebriated, jazzy, with too many trombone glissandos, initial promise not maintained. Yet, she has imagination and the means to realise her intentions. I look forward to hearing further pieces by her.

Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto, premiered by the New York Philharmonic in March 1940 (Brosa/Barbirolli), expresses the ominous tensions leading to WWII, superbly addressed here in a reading that shunned anything glib, soloist and conductor as-one in presenting a troubled, even bleak, work that reflects its times (and ours) and the concerned composer speaking through music that ostensibly should have a showy side but here bit into the listener’s consciousness, Simone Lamsma, playing fabulously, absolutely involved with the distressed message of the music, ending in uncertainty, very un-concerto-like, Manze and RLP exploring the work as profoundly as did Lamsma. Had she played an encore, it would have spoiled the moment.

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Benjamin Britten: Violin Concerto

Carmel Smickersgill: A Brick Thrown with Love – BBC co-commission: world premiere
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Symphony No.9 in E-minor

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0030

https://www.carmelsmickersgill.co.uk

Recorded 1964 in New York City, perhaps including members of the NY Philharmonic. Starts at 5:35.

Andrew Manze & the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic record Vaughan Williams’s Job for Onyx.

September 25, 1958, Carnegie Hall. (As for Gould’s Tallis, maybe Stokowski’s Orchestra includes NYP members.)