Customer Reviews

The Film Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Vol. 2

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Ralph Vaughan Williams' film scores are outstanding. What images he created when you listen to CD. I found this CD in a used bin. I was really surprised. I no longer have to wait to hear them on public radio!

This CD features the score Vaughan Williams wrote for the 1941 British film 49th Parallel. The music is a series of musical portraits of various parts of the film. The film itself was an effort to bring to the United States the story of how Canada was helping the British war effort. The hope was that the United States would soon become an ally of Great Britain in its war against the Nazi's. While the music for the film has been preserved, there is no current DVD copy of the film for region 1. Turner Classic Movies shows the film from time to time.

Ralph Vaughan Williams' first film score was written for "49th Parallel," a 1941 war epic produced under the auspices of the British Ministry of Information. I haven't seen the film, but the sixteen movement, thirty-eight minute suite which opens this disc is one of the composer's least memorable works. "The Dim Little Island," a 1949 score for another British propaganda film, falls into the same category. It isn't Vaughan Williams' fault that music that was written to accompany film, and was not meant for stand-alone listening, should end up in a collection like this. Yet, this is what happens in our age of "the complete music of [name the composer]" editions.

"The England of Elizabeth" suite, for which I held out higher hopes, is the original version of the score from "The Elizabethan Age," a government-sponsored documentary that first screened in 1957. Even though the five movement suite, including choral parts, on this Chandos disc represents the original, it's definitely a case of "more is not necessarily better." Muir Mathieson reduced Vaughan Williams' score to a compact and very effective three movement concert suite, "Three Portraits from 'The England of Elizabeth,'" which was recorded by Andre Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra in the 1970's (Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 5, etc.). Mathieson knew what he was doing for his adaptation transformed Vaughan Williams' extended score, which had "great bones," into a real gem. The Previn disc, which I highly recommend, also includes Vaughan Williams' fifth symphony and fine tuba concerto.