Name: Poème Héroïque
Start: 2016-11-20T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2016-11-20T00:00:00.000Z
Location: Auckland Town Hall

Organization

Admin

Aorangi Symphony Orchestra

Conductor

Sarah Bisley

Orchestra

Instrumentalist

Philip Smith

Organ

Joella Pinto

Violin

Poème Héroïque

Auckland

New Zealand

Auckland Town Hall

Public

Concert

Poéme héroïque, op. 33

Le Tombeau de Couperin

The Lark Ascending

Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, op. 47

Alejandro Alberto Giess Sarmiento

Approved

The Aorangi Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sarah Bisley, Joella Pinto (violin)
Recorded live by Franco Viganoni in the Auckland Town Hall, New Zealand on November 20th 2016.

Vaughan Williams served in the Great War, volunteering when it broke out, although he was already 42. He enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps and after training was posted to France. Echoes of his service there sound through the slow movement of his masterly Pastoral Symphony. He was transferred to Salonika, and then back to France. He detested the phrase ‘officers and men’. When accepted as an officer candidate, he told the board he would regret ceasing to be a man on becoming an officer.
In 1908 Vaughan Williams had gone to Paris to acquire ‘a little French polish’ from his younger contemporary, Ravel, and evidence of his success may be found in the London Symphony. That work was first given in March 1914. The Lark Ascending was also composed before the war, and like the symphony revised after it. 
A favourite work, it is not a virtuoso concerto, and so its chances of performance are rarer than its popularity suggests they should be. An extract from George Meredith’s poem is inscribed in the score:
‘He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound, 
Of many links without a break, 
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake…
It is, as Michael Kennedy puts it, ‘a song of thanksgiving with no thought of war’.                                                   Nicholas Tarling

Featured painting: "The Cornfield" by John Constable

Ralph Vaughan Williams "The Lark Ascending" (1914/1921)

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Instrumentation

Ensemble