Orchestra of the Swan’s 21st Anniversary Concert – The English Genius:Themes and variations

14 March 2017: Stratford ArtsHouse

• Gustav Holst – St Paul’s Suite
• Ralph Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
• Ralph Vaughan Williams – Symphony no5 in D major

With the first classical symphonies (as we might recognize them today) emerging from around Lombardy in the 1730s, it seems awfully bad form that the earliest English masterpiece of the genre didn’t arrive until 1908: with Elgar’s magnificent opus 55. To make up for its tardiness, though, that work was performed one hundred times in just over a year – in cities as far apart as Manchester and Saint Petersburg.

And, of course, it wasn’t long before other composers took up the baton. So – even though many pundits repeatedly (and fatuously) declared the form dead (globally) during the 20th Century – suddenly, like buses, whole hosts of English symphonic works arrived together! Names that spring to mind as Elgar’s natural heirs include those born ‘just up the road’ in Northampton – William Alwyn, Malcolm Arnold, and Edmund Rubbra: who wrote twenty-five between them. Down the road was Humphrey Searle – born in Oxford – with five. And then, looking south, towards the village (and glorious hymn-tune) of Down Ampney, in Gloucestershire, there emerged probably the country’s greatest symphonic composer to date: Ralph Vaughan Williams, with his traditional sequence of nine.

It never ceases to amaze me just how distinctive in disposition these creations are – and yet all are instantly identifiable as the man’s own. But the Fifth – which closes this 21st Anniversary Concert – is the one which many claim to be his greatest (and I could not disagree).

Ostensibly romantic and beautiful, it should offer respite from the explicit violence of its predecessor; and yet it overflows with ambiguity: inciting doubt, rather than imparting belief. It could, in its own keep-calm-and-carry-on fashion, be seen as a stereotypically English response to the global destruction enveloping its arrival; and yet its heartfelt desolation lies barely beneath its composer’s not-quite-so-stiff upper lip – so does not take much unearthing. It is thus, I contend, the most ‘mortal’ of his symphonies. Indeed, as their creator once stated: “The principles which govern the composition of music… are not the tricks of the trade or even the mysteries of the craft, they are founded on the very nature of human beings.”

110 years after its prodigious birth, the English symphony endures. A wonderful recent example is Peter Maxwell Davies’ Symphony No.10. And we also have the English Symphony Orchestra’s extensive 21st Century Symphony Project – led by OOTS’ former guest conductor Kenneth Woods – launching in a fortnight. Long may it prevail!