Vaughan Williams Symphony No.4

City Halls, Glasgow, 23/1/24

BBCSSO, Ryan Wigglesworth (piano/conductor)

“Imagine an explosive unstoppable emotional force” – the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s publicity for the 2024-25 season has not thus far striven to exemplify understatement, and the tagline of the first Thursday night concert of 2025 did not break new ground in this regard.  Nor, though, could it validly be dubbed an overstatement.  The headline work, Vaughan Williams’ 1935 Symphony No.4, is undeniably the composer’s angriest, written as fascism and the spectre of impending conflict were emerging in Europe. Years later, when a concertgoer said he “didn’t like” the work, the composer was heard to say: “I'm not at all sure that I like it, but I meant it.”.  The rest of the concert, though less stormy, was not without its moments of darkness too.  The concert opened with Chief Conductor Ryan Wigglesworth directing Mozart’s 1786 C minor concerto, No.24, from the piano.  After the interval, Benjamin Britten’s 1974 ‘Suite on English Folk Tunes – A Time There Was’ preceded the symphony.  We were back on the familiar ground of live broadcast on Radio 3, introduced by Kate Molleson.  Attendance was modest but satisfactory.

Exactly a year and eleven months previously, in a concert that included Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’, we heard Ryan Wigglesworth direct a performance of the Bach Keyboard Concerto No. 2 in E major from the piano, in a delightful chamber Kaffeekonzert reading.  With full wind band, horns, trumpets and timpani, Mozart’s 24th is his most fully scored (and at times operatic) piano concerto, yet a delicacy of touch with Mozartian phrasing  informed a performance that once again exploited the scope for chamber music, especially in the dialogue between piano and winds.  On the night before Storm Éowyn raged through the country, conspiratorial strings set  the stark ‘Sturm und Drang’ mood, answered more ornately by the wind band.  The piano entry was recitative-like, setting the scene for the drama.  Episodes of major key sweetness came and went, but the overall sombre mood was sustained.  The cadenza was definitely a first hearing for me, deliciously post-modern, and I was moved to ponder: was it Maestro Wigglesworth’s own?  As I was typing this the following day with the wind howling past my window, on a whim I checked the podcast on BBC Sounds (Radio 3 in Concert) and Kate Molleson confirmed: the cadenzas we heard were indeed composed by Wigglesworth.  Fabulous.  Solo piano opened the slow movement with limpid simplicity in the relative major (E-flat), a pastoral mood supplanting the anxiety of the preceding movement.  A central C-minor section with wind counterpoint in dialogue with the soloist was only one of many instances of the mutually responsive chamber phrasing that was characteristic of the performance.  The theme-and-variations Larghetto finale launched back in C-minor but with a rather genial narrative ambience.  The characterful variations were presented as if a series of characters in a drama.  Two major-key variations flank a particularly moving minor variation.  Another Wigglesworth cadenza led to the final tripping variation and the concluding minor cadence.  Perfect Mozart.

In a first hearing for this reviewer, Britten’s ‘Suite on English Folk Tunes’ is a late work setting no fewer than 10 tunes over 5 characterful movements that have a freshness and candour, despite the inclusion of some recycled material in the mix.  The nostalgic subtitle,  ‘A Time There Was’, is taken from a Thomas Hardy poem.  Timpani and strings launched the playful, rhythmic first movement ‘Cakes and Ale’, which danced through a variety of timbral groupings before guest leader Lucy Gould’s violin led the diminuendo into the ‘distance’.  ‘The Bitter Withy’ had a more nocturnal rustic feel with string polyphony, chords and sweeps from Helen Thomson’s harp, and taps on a tubular bell.  ‘Hankin Booby’ had a medieval dancelike feel with a tenor drum and glorious playing from the winds again.  Hints of the faster of the Frank Bridge Variations surfaced in ‘Hunt the Squirrel’, jigs and reels in a swirling fusion with the strings on top form.  The final movement, ‘Lord Melbourne’, had an elegiac feel with solos for all the wind principals, most movingly led by James Horan’s cor anglais, though Mathew Higham’s flute had the last pianissimo word.  A super piece, given a persuasive outing with top-drawer playing from the orchestra.

The Vaughan Williams roared into life with a sense of violent menace, a recurring four-note motif suggesting an unstoppable malevolent force, rendered more monstrous by ingenious fugal writing.  Even when the initial rage of the brass subsides temporarily, the string writing is angst-ridden.  Although the Fourth represented a new departure in symphonic craft for the composer, there is plenty of demonic malevolence in the 1931 ballet ‘Job: a Masque for Dancing’, so I am not sympathetic to the view that the Fourth is in any sense ‘out of character’.  The same desolate symphonic landscapes are found in Nos. 6 & 7 also.  But the Fourth is his first truly non-programmatic symphony and, whilst the Fifth will always be my favourite, I consider it an absolute gem.  Not being a fan of Walt Whitman, I find the ‘Sea Symphony’ outstays its welcome somewhat (apart from the thrilling opening, of course).  The ‘London’ is entertaining and the ‘Pastoral’ is pretty and inoffensive.  But the Fourth is a force to be reckoned with.   Ryan Wigglesworth guided a performance with immediacy and directness that had me on the edge of my seat.   The playing was phenomenal with relentless focus and commitment.  The bleakness of the slow movement’s evocation of a blighted landscape was vivid and compelling.  The Scherzo’s tripping syncopated dance exuded malevolence, while the central section’s triple-time fugue for brass recalled Job’s Comforters.  The same unholy elements occupy the Finale, segueing from the Scherzo.  At one point, it appears that the monster’s energy is spent, but the brass rekindles its fire and it turns on itself with self-destructive rage.  With one final hammer-blow, the nightmare is extinguished.  I hope I’ll be forgiven for indulging in a fantasy visualisation of what I’ve acknowledged as Vaughan Williams’ “first truly non-programmatic symphony”, but with or without it, this evocative pure music always blows me away.  In this performance, more than ever.  Superb.