A brass fanfare, massed chorus urging us, fortissimo, to “Behold, the sea”: Ralph Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony (Symphony No 1) hurls forth a mighty wall of sound in its opening bars. Thereafter the full gamut of orchestral hardware rides the sonic storm, with two harps in swift glissando, strings, brass and woodwind careering across the stave and the organ joining the roar. “See where their white sails, bellying in the wind, Speckle the green and blue” as Walt Whitman, whose mystical-visionary poems Vaughan WIlliams sets here, expresses it.
Prom 16 was reassuringly full on Wednesday – compared with recent thin attendance, and despite that day’s rail strike – to hear the BBC Symphony Chorus, the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales and soloists, conducted by Andrew Manze. All rose to the challenge of this tumultuous work. The chorus is present throughout the four movements, which move from naturalistic – ships, smoke, voyages – to spiritual, and the “farther sail” of the human soul. Perilous moments aside, the double choir excelled, capturing the symphony’s magnitude and glory.
