Ralph Vaughan Williams was born 150 years ago and throughout 2022 it’s seemed that you can’t listen to BBC Radio 3 without hearing his music. Radio 4 has joined in, as has virtually every orchestra in the land as well as many recording companies. Yet there wasn’t any sign of RVW-fatigue among last night’s near-capacity audience for this Vaughan Williams “celebration” from the Bach Choir (with which the composer often sang, becoming its music director in the 1920s).
The days when Vaughan Williams was routinely dismissed as part of the cow-pat school of English music are long gone. True, he had an all-consuming interest in English folk music, but he was also one of this country’s most cosmopolitan composers. He studied with Maurice Ravel, and, of more relevance to this concert, early in his career he discovered the American poet Walt Whitman (also a lasting influence on the Beat poets, notably Allen Ginsberg: “What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman…”).
