(This essay will be published as a music review of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 1 in D major "A Sea Symphony," and Camille Saint-Saens' Symphony No. 3 in C minor "Organ Symphony," by the Connecticut Choral Society and the New Jersey Choral Society under the baton of Maestro Eric Dale Knapp at The Fine Arts Center at Naugatuck Valley Community College on June 3rd 2012).
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Wave Series-Momentum by Ira Barkoff, whose
work was featured as part of the multimedia
experience which accompanied the
performance of A Sea Symphony |
“Behold the Sea!” Indeed. On Sunday (June 3rd) a capacity crowd at the
Naugatuck Valley Community College Fine Arts Center in Waterbury did just that,
as the Connecticut Choral Society joined forces with the New Jersey Choral
Society under the masterful direction of Maestro Eric Dale Knapp, in a stunning
performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ neglected masterpiece, his Symphony No.1 in D
major, known as A Sea Symphony.
It is lamentable that so many works
of Vaughan Williams, one of England’s greatest composers, remain underperformed. Most music lovers know Vaughan Williams as the British composer
who often used pastoral and folksong themes in creating distinctively
“English traditional” compositions, but in A
Sea Symphony, he crafted a truly modern, all-encompassing musical treasure.
Modern as in Mahler, Debussy, and Stravinsky; and all-encompassing as the sea.
In this, his first large-scale orchestral work, Vaughan Williams created
a transcendent choral symphony with solo voices, set to a text drawn from Walt
Whitman’s monumental book of poems, “Leaves
of Grass,” written in what was then the still controversial style of free
verse. Vaughan Williams labored for over six years, from 1903 to 1909, on both
which verses of Whitman’s elegiac poetry to use and on the score itself, before
premiering A Sea Symphony at the
Leeds Festival in 1910.
To be sure, other composers had previously written music about the
ocean. In the 1830s, Felix Mendelssohn wrote three symphonic overtures on the
subject, the most popular of which has come down to us as “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage,” and Claude Debussy wrote his
atmospheric tone poem, La Mer (The Sea), in
1905. But neither composer had the grand vision which Vaughan
Williams had imagined and then
actualized in A Sea Symphony, composed in a way that had never been
conceived before, wherein the vocal forces, both soloists and full choral
ensembles, shine throughout all of its four movements.
Vaughan Williams’ unique talent for creating what can be aptly described
as “pictures in sound” resulted in memorable and moving melodies in his large-scale
compositions. From the opening of A Sea
Symphony, the listener is awash in its brilliant chords, which lead
directly into an exultant D major chorus rejoicing in and announcing the sea.
There is a revolutionary, indeed transformative originality in the chordal
structure of this work, even in comparison to Vaughan Williams’ later output,
that at times verges on the mystical or religious. Awe-inspiring, mysterious,
majestic and compelling are adjectives which can only suggest vast portions of
this symphony, and thus, the awesome power of the sea itself.
The combined forces of the Connecticut Choral Society and the New Jersey
Choral Society seamlessly collaborated in their ensemble
passages throughout the work to create a shimmering wall of sound, which conjured the oceanic waves. A
superb orchestra of selected first-chair players accompanied the singers and
convincingly essayed the ascending and descending chromatic passages, evoking those very wave-like undulations. The choruses sang the accompanying melodic lines
splendidly, and crisply adjusted to the abrupt changes in dynamics and tempo, channeling in music the fury of fickle weather and water on the high seas. It is testimony to Maestro Knapp’s conducting
technique - precise or grandly gesturing as called for – that he was able to
draw such texture and nuance from this fine collaboration of instrumentalists and
vocalists.
The excellent soprano Jessica Rivera made the most
of her several brilliant solo turns, intelligently informing her musical lines,
with her upper register especially radiant and blooming in the second movement.
Mark Womack’s clarion and dramatic baritone voice was ideally suited to announce
the power of the ocean in his elegant solo work in the first and third
movements. The two singers also had moments of sublime vocal duet, richly
intertwining their voices.
Maestro
Knapp has developed a well-deserved reputation for curating "musical concept" performances
that are truly visionary in scope and incorporate many of the various art forms. Whitman’s complete verses from Leaves of Grass
that Vaughan Williams used in his score were all included in the deeply
referenced program book. The concert itself began with a prelude that was thoughtfully
chosen to complement the Vaughan Williams work, namely the spectacular last movement of
Camille Saint-Saens’ magisterial Symphony No.3 in
C Minor, which showcased the Choral Societies' accomplished organist (and accompanist) Linda Sweetman-Waters. Before the performance, there was a fascinating and visually rich lecture
by Professor Laura Dolp of Montclair State University on the nautical history
of England. And, to top it off, the foyer of the Fine Arts Center was festooned
with paintings by a number of prominent maritime artists, including Ira
Barkoff, Joanne Conant and Charles Raskob Robinson, accompanied by several
scaled-down models of the great ocean liners of yesteryear, handcrafted by Michael Jedd, to complete this thoroughly immersive, interactive and
kaleidoscopic feast for all of the senses.
An additional acknowledgment needs to be made about the core of this
superb group of musicians. Both the Connecticut
Choral Society and the New Jersey Choral Society are fully comprised of
dedicated non-paid, amateur vocalists. The word “amateur” stems from the Latin,
“amare,” meaning “to love.” These singers’ evident love of performing the great vocal literature is
a splendid example of amateurism at its finest, and we as listeners are the beneficiaries of
their abiding musical passions.
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Storm by Joanne Conant,
whose works were also
featured at the performance of
A Sea Symphony |
Copyright 2012 Vincent P. de Luise M.D. A Musical Vision
The Gala on September 8th evening will unfold with a spectacular farm-to-table dinner with paired wines, prepared by three of Connecticut's most celebrated chefs: Carole Peck of Good News Cafe, Tom Gould of Brass City Bistro, and Jerry Reveron, founder of the Woodward House and executive chef at the Taft School. 
