Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.
Vaughan Williams comes to America
Synopsis
It was on today’s date in 1922 that the 49-year-old English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams conducted the American premiere of his Third, or “Pastoral” Symphony at the Litchfield County music festival in Norfolk, Connecticut.
It was his first trip to the U.S. and he reacted to American landscapes and customs with both wonderment and amusement. He found the Woolworth building in New York more impressive than Niagara Falls, writing to his friend Gustav Holst that “I’ve come to the conclusion that the Works of Man terrify me more than the Works of God.” He was also bemused by America’s summertime fondness for chicken salad, which he called “beyond powers of expression.”
As for the premiere American performance of his “Pastoral” Symphony, he reported it had been “excellent.”
Vaughan Williams would return to the United States twice more before his death in 1958. By that time his music had become very popular in American. George Szell in Cleveland, Rafael Kubelik in Chicago, and Dimtri Mitropoulos in New York were all in heated competition to secure rights to the American premiere of his Seventh Symphony, for example.
Spoiler alert: Kubelik and the Chicago Symphony won out.
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 - 1958) — Symphony No. 3 "Pastoral" (Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra; Kees Bakels, cond.) Naxos 8.550733