Hickox commemorates the Vaughan Williams anniversary
Richard Hickox is a leading interpreter of Ralph Vaughan William's music. Jut over ten years ago, he led a pioneering cycle of all the Vaughan Williams symphonies with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, while his ongoing cycle for Chandos Records with the London Symphony Orchestra has attracted both critical and commercial success.
In 2008, the 50th year since Vaughan Williams' death, he not only conducts all the symphonies, this time at the Royal Festival Hall and across the UK with the Philharmonia Orchestra, but also conducts two of his operas, Pilgrim's Progress - semi-staged at Sadler's Wells (also with the Philharmonia), and Riders to the Sea at English National Opera, directed by Fiona Shaw (her first opera production) and designed by visual artist Dorothy Cross. This is in addition to appearances with the City of London Sinfonia at the Brighton Festival and elsewhere.
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Appearances
Sunday 11 May 2008 • The Dome, Brighton
City of London Sinfonia and Brighton Festival Chorus
Vaughan Williams Overture 'The Wasps', Songs of Travel, Toward an Unknown Region, Riders to the Sea
Friday 16 May 2008 • Tunbridge Wells Girls' Grammar School
Saturday 17 May 2008 • Ipswich Corn Exchange
Sunday 18 May 2008 • High Wycombe Swan
City of London Sinfonia
Stravinsky Pulcinella Suite , Mozart Horn Concerto No.4, Vaughan Williams Five Variants on 'Dives and Lazarus' , Schubert Symphony No.5 D485
Wednesday 21 May 2008 • Bedford Corn Exchange
Philharmonia Orchestra
Vaughan Willams Symphony No.8, The Lark Ascending (Anthony Marwood: violin), Symphony No.2 'London'
Thursday 22 May 2008 • Royal Festival Hall
Philharmonia Orchestra, London Symphony Chorus, Susan Gritton, Gerald Finley
Vaughan Williams Symphony No.7 'Antarctica', Symphony No.1 'A Sea Symphony
Friday 23 May 2008 • De Montfort Hall, Leicester
Philharmonia Orchestra
Mendelssohn Overture 'The Hebrides' Op.26 (Fingal's Cave) , Bruch Violin Concerto No.1 in G minor (Alina Ibragimova: violin), Vaughan Williams Symphony No.1
Saturday 31 May 2008 • Royal Festival Hall
Philharmonia Orchestra
Vaughan Williams Symphony No.8, The Lark Ascending (Anthony Marwood: violin), Symphony No.2 'London'
Sunday 8 June 2008 • Central Theatre, Chatham
City of London Sinfonia
Vaughan Williams Five Variants on 'Dives and Lazarus' , Mozart Symphony No.40 in G minor, K550
Friday 13 June 2008 • Brangwyn Hall, Swansea
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Sibelius Symphony No.3, Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending (Jennifer Pike: violin), Beethoven Symphony No.3 in E Flat ‘Eroica’
Saturday 14 June 2008 • Sherbourne Abbey
City of London Sinfonia
Grieg Holberg Suite , Vaughan Williams Five Mystical Songs , Vaughan Williams Five Variants on 'Dives and Lazarus' , Handel Dixit Dominus
Friday 20 June 2008 • Sadler’s Wells
Sunday 22 June 2008 • Sadler’s Wells (matinée)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Vaughan Williams The Pilgrim's Progress
Tuesday 8 July 2008 • Chichester Cathedral
Philharmonia Orchestra
Ravel Tombeau de Couperin , Bruch Violin Concerto No.1 in G minor (Alina Ibragimova: violin), Vaughan Williams Symphony No.5 in D
Wednesday 9 July 2008 • Truro Cathedral
Philharmonia Orchestra
Ravel Tombeau de Couperin , Bruch Violin Concerto No.1 in G minor (Jennifer Pike: violin), Vaughan Williams Symphony no.5 in D
Friday 11 July 2008 • Tewkesbury Abbey
Philharmonia Orchestra, London Symphony Chorus, Susan Gritton
Ravel Tombeau de Couperin , Bruch Violin Concerto No.1 in G minor (Alina Ibragimova: violin), Vaughan Williams Symphony No.7 'Antarctica'
Tuesday 12 August 2008 • Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Aldeburgh
City of London Sinfonia
Mozart Symphony No.34 in C major K338, Vaughan Williams Flos Campi
Sunday 17 August 2008 • Royal Albert Hall (Proms)
City of London Sinfonia, BBC Singers
Mozart Symphony No.34 in C major K338, Vaughan Williams Flos Campi , Nigel Osbourne Flute Concerto, Beethoven Mass in C
Sunday 2 November 2008 • Royal Festival Hall
Philharmonia Orchestra, The Joyful Company of Singers
Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis , Symphony No.9, Three Shakespeare S onnets, Symphony No.6, Symphony No.5 in D
Tuesday 4 November 2008 • Bedford Corn Exchange
Philharmonia Orchestra, Lisa Milne
Ravel Le Tombeau de Couperin Mozart Exsultate Jubilate , Strauss Morgen , Zeignung , Befreit , Vaughan Williams Symphony No.3 'Pastoral'
Thursday 6 November 2008 • Royal Festival Hall
Philharmonia Orchestra, London Symphony Chorus, Alan Opie, Lisa Milne
Vaughan Williams Response to War , Dona Nobis Pacem , Symphony No.3 'Pastoral', Symphony No.4
Thursday 27 November 2008 • The Coliseum
Friday 28 November 2008 • The Coliseum
Sunday 30 November 2008 • The Coliseum
English National Opera
Vaughan Williams Riders to the Sea
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Live reviews:
City of London Sinfonia / Riders to the Sea (5 stars)
"Richard Hickox is certainly doing his bit to mark the 50th anniversary of Vaughan Williams’s death... Hickox’s accompaniments were always models of stylistic correctness."
The Guardian, May 2008
"Richard Hickox conducted the City of London Sinfonia with mastery of a score that is unsparing in its emtion, and he made clear its foreshadowings of great things to come in the composer's output."
The Sunday Telegraph, May 2008
Philharmonia Orchestra, London Symphony Chorus, Susan Gritton, Gerald Finley / Symphony No.7 'Antarctica', Symphony No.1 'A Sea Symphony'
"...anyone who loves Vaughan Williams, and those on the way to loving him, couldn't ask for a tastier concert series than the Philharmonia Orchestra's five-pack, spread throughout 2008, the 50th anniversary of the composer's death.
We began with the water symphonies: water frozen in Sinfonia Antartica, hewn from the film score for Scott of the Antarctic; water billowing into symbol and philosophy in A Sea Symphony, hewn from Walt Whitman. They made a great match.
Hickox's understanding and the Philharmonia's finesse worked really well together. Two more symphonies follow in the Philharmonia's next Vaughan Williams programme on May 31."
The Times, May 2008
"Neither symphony launching this series celebrating Vaughan Williams's 50th anniversary is performed often. The first, his setting of Walt Whitman's Song for All Seas, All Ships, demands a veritable navy of orchestral and choral resources, and the seventh, an expansion of the score of Scott of the Antarctic, is usually dismissed as an oddity, fraught with technical and artistic difficulty.
As an exploration of the awe and mystery of the natural world and of man's hubristic desire to master it, it is appropriate that the Sinfonia Antarctica threatens to spin out of control at every lurching turn - which made Hickox and the Philharmonia's restrained mastery of the score all the more remarkable. Never trying to squeeze order where none was to be found, nor over-egging Vaughan Williams's exotic pudding of percussive effect, wordless voices and Promethean collisions of timbre and tone, the inhuman landscape seemed powerfully present, penetrated only by the oboe homage to Captain Oates's last walk and the ethereal solo violin reverie in which his mortal breath ceases."
The Guardian, May 2008
"Conductor Richard Hickox has an instinctive command of VW's idiom, and knows how far pastoral spaciousness can bend the music's pulse without sounding indulgent.
The last movement of the Sea Symphony, often decried as shapeless, seemed as shrewdly structured and paced in this performance as anything in Mahler."
The Telegraph, June 2008
Philharmonia Orchestra / Symphony No.2 'A London Symphony'
"Thanks to the Philharmonia's beautifully nuanced playing and Hickox's advocacy, it sounded not a note too long.
The concert opened with an edgy, spirited account of the brisk Symphony No8 in D minor, written late in RVW's life and making expansive use of bells, vibraphones and all the latest in tuned percussion."
Evening Standard, May 2008
Philharmonia Orchestra / The Pilgrim's Progress
"The Philharmonia Orchestra and Richard Hickox already deserve plaudits for marking the 50th anniversary of the composer's death with a wide-ranging concert series, but this stunning production of his Bunyan-inspired opera — an epic that occupied Vaughan Williams, on and off, for more than 20 years — went beyond the call of duty. It was one of the most revelatory and moving evenings that I can remember. The only sadness? Just two performances, both now gone.
Hickox conducted with affection, the Philharmonia played eloquently, and the young Philharmonia Voices, who had roared the roof off as the Doleful Creatures of Hell, welcomed the Pilgrim to Heaven with a radiant halo of choral sound."
The Times, 5 stars, June 2008
“Richard Hickox conducted with a fine sense of the music's flow and grandeur, coaxing some limpidly beautiful playing from the orchestra. The performance's other major asset was the warm, smooth and heartfelt singing of that splendid baritone Roderick Williams as the Pilgrim.”
The Telegraph, June 2008
“This was the centrepiece of the Philharmonia Orchestra’s series marking the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death, and it pulled out all the stops.
The conductor was Richard Hickox, one of the composer’s most ardent champions; the orchestra, onstage rather than in the pit, was in top form; and it is hard to imagine anyone assembling a better cast.”
Evening Standard, 5 stars, June 2008
“Richard Hickox’s performance gave overwhelming proof that this.. work.. has lost none of it’s spiritual power.
The huge cast of mainly English singers were completely at one with Hickox’s urgent, animated view of the work.”
Sunday Telegraph, June 2008
“Hickox conducted with the authoritative familiarity that makes him pre-eminent in this repertory, and the cast was a roster of the finest young British singers of today.”
The Guardian, June 2008
“With Richard Hickox as conductor, as he is for the symphony cycle, the warmth and dignity of Vaughan-Williams’ idiom were in safe hands.”
Financial Times, June 2008
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Recordings on Chandos
Click on the discs below to visit Chandos Records for more information on each disc:
Press reaction to Richard Hickox's cycle of Vaughan Williams' symphonies on Chandos:
"…Richard Hickox presides with superb control and a feeling for the idiom that has made his unfolding Vaughan Williams symphony cycle for Chandos such a joy… this original version of A London Symphony is one of those records surely destined for classic status…"
Gramophone Magazine
"This must be the most winningly played and recorded performance of this masterful work yet put on disc."
The Times (about Symphony No.4)
"Even by his own standards, this disc is an outstanding achievement for the indefatigable Hickox."
Classic FM Magazine (about A Sea Symphony , No.1)
One of Richard Hickox's strong points is the absolute sense of clarity he brings to any Vaughan Williams score.
The American Record Guide
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Links
• Philharmonia Orchestra
• Chandos Records
• English National Opera
• City of London Sinfonia
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