Brisbane Chorale and Brisbane Philharmonic Orchestra teamed up to bring us a beautiful programme on Sunday at Brisbane City Hall. One of my beloved venues. The programme was Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance March no 4” and Vaughan Williams “Lark Ascending” masterfully played on violin by Glenn Christensen. Both these pieces are well known and crowd favourites and we thoroughly enjoyed their rendition.

It was Vaughan William’s Sea Symphony however that was a revelation. Revealed artfully by the young and impressive conductor Stephen Moore who in a familiar and jocular tone introduced us to the four parts of the Symphony.

Vaughan Williams was one of the first to use a choir throughout. He was attracted to the poetry of Walt Whitman and its relatively free form and he started composing the Symphony based on a selection of texts from Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” in 1903. It was finally completed in 1909 as we heard it performed today.

It appealed to me not only for its poetic and chorale form but also for the strong and powerful music that took us to the sea and all it holds within it. “A song for all Seas”, in the first movement, “On the beach at night alone” ponders a man’s place in the universe. The third movement, the Scherzo is “The Waves” and the turbulence of the sea and the fourth, “The Explorers” is mankind’s restless quest for answers and setting forth on its journey. ‘Oh farther sail, farther, farther sail’.

Movement 2: On the Beach at night alone.

On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all, …
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, …
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, …
All nations, …
All identities that have existed or may exist …,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

https://www.eif.co.uk/news-and-blogs/get-to-know-a-sea-symphony

A small extract of the music and a photo of the composer himself.