The only complaint I can think of regarding Ursula Vaughan Williams's eminently readable biography of her husband is that just the mentions of the great pieces of music for which RVW was responsible make me urgently desire to listen again to the pieces in question and I haven't got time to do so. Can't blame her for that, though.
Tried to deal with the problem today by bunging on Sancta Civitas and donning the ear-phones to get as up-close and personal as possible. Chose this since I've been haunted by it ever since first getting acquainted in the 1980s, yet for some reason I've not played it as often as the symphonies and Job and the other obvious stuff.
Gentle Reader, it blew my mind. When the solo violin kicked in at about the mid-way mark with the pentatonic-Lark Ascending-sort-of-phrasing I felt as close to heaven as I'm likely to get in this life (and maybe in any other.) I know the old chap purported to be an Agnostic but it's a very peculiar kind of unbelief that can cut right through to the heart of things, if you ask me. This man had seen the Holy City.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment