A Sea Symphony

Royal Albert Hall, London (prom 67)
10 September 2001

Joan Rodgers (soprano)
Simon Keenlyside (baritone)
Leonard Slatkin (conductor)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Prom 67

Ralph Vaughan Williams: A Sea Symphony

Arnold Schoenberg: A Survivor from Warsaw

Alexander Goehr: Second Musical Offering (premiere)

This concert was broadcast on Radio 3

What the critics say

Andrew Clements for The Guardian, September 12, 2001

Three Star Rating: ***

”There are rousing things in Vaughan Williams’s music, but far fewer in Whitman’s clotted, tendentious verses, although Slatkin conducted the elephantine piece as if he believed in it. And the soloists – soprano Joan Rodgers and baritone Simon Keenlyside, both in fine form – did their best to deliver the text as if it were meaningful (what does “I think a thought of the clef of the universe” actually mean?), while the combined voices of the BBC Symphony and Philharmonia Choruses and the Trinity College Chamber Choir relished the opportunities for some full-throttle singing.”

Matthew Rye for The Telegraph, 12 September 2001

Musical light.
Leonard Slatkin first came to prominence in this country as one of the few non-Brits who took to the symphonies of Vaughan Williams. To complete this wide-ranging concert, he conducted the first, A Sea Symphony, a work that with its large orchestra, including organ, and massed choirs seems made for the RAH. With ardent soloists in Joan Rodgers and Simon Keenlyside and magnificent singing from the BBC Symphony Chorus, the Philharmonia Chorus and the Trinity College of Music Chamber Choir, it made a formidable impact.