The London Philharmonic is marking the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams in three concerts this autumn. Andrew Manze conducted the first of them, allowing a London audience a sample of the outstanding VW performances he has been producing in recent seasons both in concert and on disc with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. The main work here was the Ninth Symphony, but there was also space for two very well known works, the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and The Lark Ascending.
The antiseptic acoustic of the Festival Hall is hardly ideal for the Tallis Fantasia, whose carefully terraced textures were conceived for the warm expanses of Gloucester Cathedral. But with all three string choirs – quartet, ensemble and orchestral strings – obliged to occupy the same platform space, Manze’s performance concentrated instead on revealing inner detail, all of it, like the solo viola line that’s woven around one of the final statements of the main theme, lovingly shaped.
