Unlike in the UK, where it can seem like every other choral society is about to perform it, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony is something of a rarity in Norway. Performing this enormous First Symphony at its last performance of the season, the orchestra of the Norwegian Opera and Ballet pulled out all the stops, combining the forces of its own chorus and children’s chorus with the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir. Unfortunately, despite their size, the chorus were rarely heard above the over-eager orchestra conducted by Alexander Soddy.
At its outset, A Sea Symphony promises so much. A trumpet fanfare, the chorus powering ahead at full force before they’re joined by the whole orchestra. It’s the sonic equivalent of standing on a pier in the middle of a gale; you can almost taste the salt water. Then Vaughan Williams proceeds to plunge the music into shanty territory for rather too long. When the composer occasionally surfaces from the waters of maritime musical clichés, it is with music so loud and overblown that it proves increasingly difficult to take seriously, not helped by the texts by Walt Whitman – often beautiful, but just as often dense and risibly archaic. Only the fourth movement – the only one where the composer attempts something approaching the metaphysical – does the joyous bombast of the climaxes feel appropriate.
The orchestra of the Norwegian Opera and Ballet, for a change placed on stage, made some terrific sounds, but they too often veered on the wrong side of loud. They were particularly deafening in the first movement and they frequently overpowered the not inconsiderable choral forces. Still, there were many very good solo moments, particularly the energetic playing of viola section leader Juliet Jopling, but the orchestra was simply too enthusiastic during the first three movements. Things luckily settled down for the fourth where the orchestra produced the first truly soft playing of the whole piece, allowing the chorus to be heard clearly.
A Sea Symphony is primarily a choral piece, but the text was really rather complicated to decipher for the first few movements as the chorus wasn’t heard properly. These balance issues may well have been at least partly due to my own proximity to the stage, but Soddy did not seem to do much to rein in the orchestra either, which was highlighted and put in the foreground when the choral line needed to be heard. When they were heard, however, the chorus sounded glorious. The extended a cappella sequences in the second and fourth movements were truly beautiful; the interjections of the female semi-chorus in the fourth movement – the women of the Soloists’ Choir – were heartbreakingly touching in their simplicity and fragility.