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ASIN : B00118DQX8
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Editorial Reviews
Product Description
2008 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Vaughan Williams and this timely DVD is the first ever full-length film biography of the great man, produced by the multi-award winning director, TONY PALMER. Features specially recorded extracts from all The Symphonies, Job, The Lark Ascending, and of course The Tallis Fantasia, archive performances by Sir ADRIAN BOULT, newly discovered interviews with VAUGHAN WILLIAMS himself and the last ever interview with URSULA VAUGHAN WILLIAMS.
Synopsis
The award-winning Tony Palmer directs this feature-length biography of influential English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. Features specially recorded extracts from Vaughan Williams work, archive performances by Sir Adrian Boult, interviews and rare footage of the man himself.
Customer Reviews
Marvellous, but... (2008-07-17)  As a biography of R.V.W. it is a marvellous compilation of facts and musicsamples.Slightly annoying, however, that the picture material is not adapted to a general format. So historical film sequences appear "broadened", i.e. with horizontally inflated proportions.
A case for letting the music do all the talking (2008-05-25)  The solitary indisputable triumph of this film lies in the performances of extracts from many of the works of Ralph Vaughan Williams. With one exception, they are very well performed; well enough, I suspect and hope, to inspire those unfamiliar with the composer's works to seek out complete recordings, or, better still, live performances. The problem, however, is that the quality of the music and of the performances disguises the truly threadbare nature of everything else in this documentary. It is a tragically missed opportunity, considering that people who worked with Vaughan Williams, including some who knew him well, were interviewed, but seem to have been invited to comment only on the most ridiculous trivia. I find it hard, for instance, to believe that the late Evelyn Barbirolli, a highly talented musician in her own right, as well as the wife of Sir John and a friend of RVW, had no more insights into the composer's music than are vouchsafed here. The interviews that actually do touch on the music in detail tend to be those with people not obviously qualified to inform us about anything other than their own opinions, notably Stephen Johnson. His fatuous comments about the Tallis Fantasia have already been rightly criticized by some reviewers here and defended, pretty ineptly, by other contributors. Johnson asserts that the Fantasia is obsessed with death, which observation is used by Tony Palmer to justify treating the Fantasia as a premonition of WWI, a self-evidently absurd idea. To be fair to Johnson, his own comments are never quite that daft, but they seem wilfully misleading, even so. Johnson is at pains to point out that Vaughan Williams used the Tallis theme first as the tune for a hymn, setting the words, "When Rising From My Bed of Death". According to Johnson, this shows the morbid associations that RVW attached to the music and thence to his Fantasia. Vaughan Williams, however, must have known the original setting of the Tallis tune, as one of a number of wonderful melodies contributed to Archbishop Parker's Psalter: "Why fum'th in fight the Gentiles spite, in fury raging stout?" It's not about death, any more than is the text to which he matched the sublime tune. "When Rising From My Bed of Death" is about life, in the form of resurrection, and not really about death at all. That Vaughan Williams probably didn't believe in "the life everlasting" is neither here nor there; he knew what the text of the hymn meant (unlike Mr. Johnson, apparently) and his choice of tune suited that meaning, not his own viewpoint on matters religious. This notion of RVW's music as raging against The War, or just war in general, becomes an idee fixe of the film, with plenty of imagery dating from wars well after RVW's lifetime. It's a bit like Mussolini's nationalisation of Puccini, when Puccini was at death's door and too weak to object. Palmer colonises dead RVW with a host of preconceptions, displaying very little sign that he (Palmer) either knows how to distinguish between true testimony and mere opinion, or has made very much effort to try. I think I am being very generous in giving three stars to this film, but I have to be fair to the musicians. Left to themselves, they'd get five.
A fine film whose virtues greatly outweigh its shortcomings (2008-04-26) I've read the other reviews so far and find them largely a very thoughtful and interesting collection - maybe that in itself is a small tribute to the subject of this film, Ralph Vaughan Williams. V.W. is not a fashionable composer and never really was (Andre Previn makes the point in the film that orchestral programmers are reluctant to allow him to put VW Symphonies on his programmes). That, again, is perhaps to his credit. He was an entirely individual voice, and I think this film goes some way towards explaining where this individuality came from and examining its nature. It is a long film with a wealth of good material - excellent contributions from Michael Kennedy, Stephen Johnson, Ursula Vaughan Williams (very touchingly at the end as a very old, frail lady speaking simply about the man and how much she loved him), friends, people associated with the Leith Hill Festival , Lady Barbirolli, etc., etc.. There are also excellent musical contributions from the National Youth orchestra under Sian Edwards and the Hungarian State Orchestra under Tamas Vasary, and we see a number of fine singers, Nicola Benedetti and others too. I am not quite so fond of the very 'staged', backlit filming of the orchestras and conductors as some other reviewers have been - it is indeed very dramatic, but it is also very artificial. I am happier with the wonderfully natural short extract from an archive broadcast of Sir Adrian Boult conducting the Romanza of the Fifth Symphony. However, the musical illustrations are a strong element in this film. So is the archive footage of places with which Vaughan Williams was associated and Victorian and Edwardian London. What I am less certain about is the link made between horror and his music. He did indeed serve in the First War and live with memories from that for the rest of his life, and the 'Pastoral' Symphony is usually (perhaps paradoxically) associated with that, but very very stark, almost unwatchable images from other wars and conflicts form an important element in this film and I am not convinced that the thesis they seem to project is right. There is also a fair degree of weight placed on the nature of his first marriage (to the long-term invalid Adeline Fisher), and the explicitness with which this is investigated, and in particular some comments made on his relationship with Ursula, his second wife, as a young woman, while possibly quite accurate, are uncomfortable ; V.W. and all those of his time would I think have been unhappy with them, would have regarded these as private matters. In all of this the hand of the filmmaker of our time is a little too apparent. Having said that, it is clearly a film made with love. Its largely chronological structure works well. Despite what I said about the orchestral backlighting, there are certainly moments when the music blazes the more effectively because of the way it is presented - I think, for example, of the end of 'The Pilgrim's Progress', which comes at us with tremendous conviction. And in the end, there is so much in this film that is good that there is never any question of a poor review ; I think back, as another reviewer did, to Ken Russell's terrible, terrible self-indulgent film on the same subject and am the more thankful that this new film exists. It lasts 2 hours and 28 minutes - a long time - but, though I have some reservations, I was never less than interested and never less than certain that we were watching a good film about a great composer and that all that appeared on screen gave evidence of his greatness. In that sense, if not quite in every other, I think it did justice to its subject.
A comprehensive and worthwhile documentary (2008-02-21)  Whether or not you are convinced by Tony Palmer's thesis in this documentary film that, far from being the ruminative English pastoralist that audiences of the time felt him to be, Vaughan Williams was in fact a man with a troubled personal life and a philosophical outlook which became increasingly bleak the older he became, all of us are in Palmer's debt for capturing conversations with many people (most of whom are now very old) who knew the composer well. Indeed, some, including Ursula, the composer's widow, have died since the film was made last year.Moreover, Tony Palmer has created a thorough and comprehensive portrait of the composer, largely through his music, with a helpful spoken commentary, chiefly given by two admirable writers, Michael Kennedy and Stephen Johnson, that will provide valuable insights to new listeners as well as those more familiar with the work.The documentary has been issued at an interesting moment, namely the fiftieth anniversary of Vaughan Williams' death in 1958. What is especially fascinating is the extent to which this composer's work has grown in public estimation during that time. We need to thank Tony Palmer for the film, and thank Michael Kennedy most warmly for his consistent championship of the music.
A well spun tale (2008-02-02) This is a very welcome film about a great composer who is woefully under-represented on DVD. It is certainly time that we should review RVW's career and our own perception of it, and Tony Palmer's beautifully made film offers and eyoyable and interesting starting point. The contributions of those who knew the man are valuable and well chosen, though I (for one) could have listened to Michael Kennedy throughout. His comments were often more succinct and perceptive than any point the film-maker was trying to get across.And that brings me to my main gripe, that it seems to me that Tony Palmer has started with a thesis (RVW the despondent pessimist, rather than Uncle Ralph, 'cowpat' composer)and has 'spun' his film to achieve that conclusion. I suppose it is a sign of the times that the viewers cannot be left to make up their own minds from the facts, but the seeds of pessimism (nihilism, almost) are apparent in A Sea Symhony and the Tallis Fantasia! Or so we are assured. Never mind that not one of those who knew the composer seems to endorse this view with the barest conviction, it must be true because the narrator says so.And facts are manipulated to give one preferential view. We are told that RVW was deeply affected by his experience in a field ambulance in WW1; we don't really know in what way or by how much since we are also told that he never spoke about it, but the film speculates that the need to pick up eyes, fingers and 'half a head' was responsible (we are told this twice). We are told that RVW enlisted as a private soldier when he could have 'bought' a commission (no he couldn't, by the way - that practice had been abolished in the previous century). But many other musicians enlisted as privates. George Butterworth and friends (mostly too from privileged backgrounds) did so, but accepted commissions soon after; Ivor Gurney remained a private throughout. And RVW accepted a commission in the Royal Artillery! We are not told this in the film, leaving the suspicion that being an artillery officer is not quite as noble as stretcher-bearer. Also, of course, RVW was Musical Director of the BEF First Army, and to top it all, he needn't have enlisted at all - he was almost 42 at the outbreak. We are not told any of this, either. He clearly wanted to 'do his bit', and we are later told that he did not agree with Michael Tippett's conscientious objector views about the next war, although he supported his right to have them.The worst thing about this, however, is that it seems to underly the film's message. Time and again, RVW's works are related directly to war and famine. The Devil in Job cuts to the Third Reich, the Sixth Symphony calls up terrible images from Iraq. Even the Seventh Symphony is used to demonstrate lack of hope for the future (well, I suppose it does, but after all it grew out of a hopeless story). The gruesome scenes (particularly from wars that RVW did not know) spring up many times - as if RVW somehow saw all this future misery. It all smacks of being wise after the event.And what did those who knew RVW him say? That the Fourth Symphony is a portrait of the composer raging against his 'imprisonment' in marriage to a crippled wife; that the Fifth is Ursula Wood, who brought him out of it; that the Devil's theme in Job came to him at a dinner party. I am sure that the Sixth must contain something of WW2 - how could it not, being written in 1946? - but not a vision of post-neuclear destruction written by chance several years before mutual destruction was a real possibility.Interestingly, the Pastoral Symhony is the only one not mentioned, and the only one that almost certainly arose out of RVW's WW1 experience. If anything, it is a homage to George Butterworth (dedicatee of, and prime-mover in the creation of the London Symphony), a close friend who had died on the Somme. (The relationship between the two composers is not mentioned at all, even though we see a silent film of Butterworth with Cecil Sharp and the Karpeles sisters dancing.)There are several factual errors, as you might expect in a three-hour documentary, and most amount to little, but it is amusing to see a fine portrait of Sir George Grove appear when the narrator talks about C. V. Stanford!The music is well played, and given in big chunks, although the two orchestras are always shown with heavy backlighting, making it seem that they are playing in the dark (perhaps this is done to emphasise the pessimism). Tantalising, though, were excerps from historical performances, particularly a studio one of the Fifth Symphony conducted beautifully by Boult. Now that should be on DVD. After three absorbing hours, RVW is actually summed up rather well - and completely against the trend of the narration - by Michael Kennedy (as a visionary) and Ursula Vaughan Williams (as a dear man whom she loved).Do buy this DVD - it is good - but, oh!, how much better it could have been without the 21st century gloss..
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