PRESIDENT: SIR ANDREW DAVIS CBE

Videos

Sir Thomas Allen

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of Vaughan Williams’s birth, The Ralph Vaughan Williams Society welcomed special guest Sir Thomas Allen, to the 2022 Annual General Meeting.

Bright is the Ring of Words

Vaughan Williams adored poetry and was a master at setting words throughout his life. Readings of poetry set by him recapture why they so appealed to him.

Commentary and music, and texts are featured from A Sea Symphony, Songs of Travel, On Wenlock Edge, Pilgrim’s Progress, Riders to the Sea, Serenade to Music… and more.

Hosted by Andrew Green.

Not Lambs Frisking

Marking the precise 100th anniversary of the first performance of A Pastoral Symphony – reflecting Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Great War service on the Western Front.

Jessica Meyer (University of Leeds) and David Stevenson  (LSE) bring to life the composer’s wartime experiences.
Andrew Green, writer and broadcaster, considers Vaughan Williams’s reluctance to explain how this ‘Pastoral Symphony’ describes his experience of war.

plus…eye-witness visions of the ‘Pastoral’ from the Western Front.

Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains

In July 2022, The Ralph Vaughan Williams Society held a discussion on Zoom and YouTube to mark the 100th anniversary of the first public performance of Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains – A Pastoral Episode. This recording of the event has been lightly edited. This short “20-minute” opera takes its libretto from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.

Revealed – Vaughan Williams’s Secret Salute to the Fallen of the Great War.

Join Andrew Green, writer & broadcaster with historians Jessica Meyer & David Stevenson for the inside story of the music and its post-war background.

The presentation includes a complete recorded performance of the opera set against haunting images of the conflict that inspired it.

A London Symphony: Music and Meaning

Vaughan Williams detested being asked what his music ‘meant’. This online event examines the clues to explaining what is portrayed in perhaps the most colourful of all his symphonies. 

Presenters: writer/broadcaster and composer Stephen Johnson,  writer/broadcasters Andrew Green and Allan W. Atlas (City University, New York).