Ralph Vaughan Williams: Symphony No 9 in E minor

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[This EMI recording is by Vernon Handley with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.] RVW's last symphonic utterance, composed in 1956-7 and first performed a few weeks before his death at the age of 85. At one time, VW intended it to be a symphony about Salisbury and the surrounding countryside and there were also to be references to Thomas Hardy's tragic novel 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles'. This idea was abandoned but many traces of the original idea survive in the finished work. My video makes reference to the city of Salisbury and the Wessex countryside, and there are also allusions to 'Tess'. Those who know the novel may spot Tess herself, Stonehenge, the scene of the novel's climax, a prison-like building and a gruesome symbol of poor Tess's tragic fate.