Vaughan Williams: A Sea Symphony

https://ums.org/performance/vaughan-williams-a-sea-symphony/

English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote his Sea Symphony over a seven-year period in the first decade of the 20th century. Inspired by the sea poems from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Vaughan Williams transforms Whitman’s ecstatic verse into music of sweeping grandeur and intimate reflection, a meditation on setting forth into the unknown with courage and hope.

Paired with this transcendent work is Vaughan Williams’s luminous Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, a one-movement work composed for double string orchestra and solo string quartet. Vaughan Williams had come across Tallis’s 16th-century tune while editing the English Hymnal, and the serene and spiritual work remains one of his most beloved compositions to this day.

Neither of these works has been performed on a UMS program in over 50 years, providing an opportunity to rediscover one of the most innovative and creative figures in 20th-century music. Conductor Scott Hanoian takes the podium after his celebrated interpretation of Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky in 2025.

Performers:

Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra

UMS Choral Union

Scott Hanoian, music director and conductor

Christine Goerke, soprano

Norman Garrett, baritone