Zoom courses: from Vaughan Williams to Nielsen

What an enriching term it's been on the orchestral front (opera, too, but that's another story). The ten autumn classes on the British symphony from 1907 to 1960 had anniversary genius Vaughan Williams at the core. I came to love those of the nine symphonies I'd either had a problem with - the Third and the Fifth, so much more going beneath the surface and not at all the placidity I'd imagined - or didn't know well (above all Eight and Nine). 

The biggest revelation was how much VW can extract from a couple of chords or an enharmonic shift, often with a distinctive turn of phrase above them. You've got a colossal case right at the start of A Sea Symphony. And then I realised that the stomach-flipping sequence towards the end of Pastoral Symphony's exposition - in that case, B flat minor to G major and back - fuels more explicit conflicts in the embattled symphonies to come. Deryck Cooke made a brilliant analysis of the Sixth focused on the essential elements of musical vocabulary it exploits so originally. Even the English-idyll intervals which can sometimes get a bit repetitive (think Lark Ascending) can be transformed according to the harmonies under them - the melancholy-hallucinatory Ninth is a striking example. 

The big enigma remains about the multitudes contained within VW's outwardly lovable and wholesome personality. Whence all that violence and discontent in 4, 6 and 9 especially? He rarely discussed his music in autobiographical terms, though John Bridcut's documentary puts its finger on some of the "passions". I think second wife Ursula gets too big a role, but the frustrations he must have felt looking after the invalid first, Adeline, immobilised by arthritis. I wonder if some of the floating wastes have to do with her frozenness. Telling that after her funeral he came back and threw a chair across the room in rage. Just came across this photo I hadn't seen before of them together back in 1917 (and of course VW's service in WW1 must have been another source of anguish).

This was also a good opportunity to listen more intently to the cycles I had to hand - Boult's and Handley's. And then at a lateish stage, when I found YouTube helpful for showing the score above another performance, I discovered Bernard Haitink's recordings with the London Philharmonic: surpassing the others for the intensity and extremity of the pianissimos, the tonal beauty throughout. Haitink doesn't often do electrifying, but his Sea Symphony is just that. What a remarkable range of sympathies he had. 

A student who didn't join last term told me I needed more than 10 Thursday afternoons to accommodate other figures on the scene. But by stopping at 1960, I ruled out the later Tippett symphonie (which baffle me) and more on Malcolm Arnold. Still, while I know his Second and Fourth Symphonies well, the First came as a revelation. The first movement has great gestures, but the finale is a tour de force from start to finish. This is an electrifying performance from Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic not available on CD.

There's an even more sophisticated brilliance about Walton 2, which reveals more every time you hear it. I still don't think I've grasped the slow movement yet, but the others show this fastidious composer adding to his palette and making forms which take the art of the symphony in yet another direction. 

Let's see if enough folk are attracted to the next term, focusing on Nielsen's magnificent six, but with more than sideways glances at Berwald, Stenhammar and Langaard. Here's the flier: click to enlarge for details and let me know if you're interested. 

Shibe the already-great

I've now encountered him live on three different occasions, and each time Sean Shibe (pictured above in electric mode at the East Neuk Festival by Colin Hattersley - amateur photos to be seen on the previous blog entry) had the audience in the palm of his hands. It's not just that he compels you to listen in to every colour he draws from his guitar, which makes him one of the most astonishing recitalists I've ever heard, and way more remarkable than other famous practitioners of his instrument who I now realise left me half-asleep to the guitar's true potential (Julian Bream, John Williams, Segovia);  he also has that centred charisma - at 25! - and hints at a hinterland beyond/behind just making music that all too few performers share. His playing embraces the subtlety of the lute and mandolin within a much wider palette.

I was glad that the other Southrepps musketeers game for this remarkable North Norfolk village's brilliant annual Festival run by top tenor Ben Johnson, three of whom hadn't heard him before - J, Isabel and Cally - feel the same, that this is a musician in a million destined for great things. (Below are two setting out at around 7pm from Jill's place in lower Southrepps up across the fields to the church that evening). Actually future fame doesn't matter as far as we initiates are concerned, though we wish him every further success; we've already witnessed greatness in action.

The even runs, expressive space and dancing elegance Shibe brought to Bach's Fourth Suite were of the essence; a packed house in Southrepps' St James's, famously attentive despite the fact that many are locals who until a couple of years ago hadn't experienced this sort of thing before, held that same intense silence I'd witnessed in the Wigmore Hall two years ago and in Anstruther much more recently.

His sequence of Villa-Lobos Preludes and Etudes led us into an hallucinogenic dream in a way that reminded me, albeit at an even more inward level, of Simon McBurney's Amazonian fantasia The Encounter. This journey left us with a heart of darkness in the shape of the Etude No. 11. It's not often that you hear simultaneous colours, different ones in melody line and support, on a piano, let alone a guitar; some of the chords above the fragments of theme were supernatural in their beauty. This film is from 2008, when Sean was a mere 16, and yet it still gives you some idea of the hypnotic fascination in his Villa-Lobos interpretation.

But in any case here we were even more prone to the Shibe magic given the wonderfully concentration-friendly air of North Norfolk in August, with the setting sun lighting up St James's west tower

and raking the scallop design homaging the church's patron saint.

Later there was the walk back down the hill, with moonlight ahead

and - I promise you this is the same time - looking back to the last glow of sunset with the distant tower.

Of our daytime bliss in walking around the area and, further west, through Sheringham Park to bathe at the resort of that name and back, another blog entry will have to tell. Meanwhile, a full accolade is due to Shibe's solo debut disc Dreams & Fancies on the excellent, Edinburgh-based Delphian label.

It indulges my slight obsession with Britten's Nocturnal, like Lachrymae presenting us with puzzle-pieces before eventually unfolding the Dowland tune. The master lutenist's numbers are mesmerising too, of course. But while I wasn't won round to Lennox Berkeley, the Malcolm Arnold Fantasy is another earwormer, its lovely simple-essential Ariettas flanked by more angular and occasionally grotesque inspirations. At any rate here's another Shibe performance of the immortal Britten, which I want to hear played in, or even outside, a country church at midnight.

Should you be at the Edinburgh Festival any time between 21 and 26 August, don't on any account miss Sean's SoftLOUD happening on the Fringe, which is bound to be a highlight of the Festival overall - I promise it will change you in one way or another. Not least for the LOUDest (earplugs provided on request, though we didn't need them in Anstruther's Dreel Halls), a staggering transcription for electric guitars (recorded and otherwise) of Julia Wolfe's Lad, originally composed for nine bagpipers. That, and Shibe himself, could become something of a cult if it reaches the most influential ears.