They both captured the optimism of their youthful days. And both endured the calamities of tragic wars that followed.
Yet Walt Whitman and Ralph Vaughan Williams, though decades and an ocean part, came to the same conclusions about the oneness of all things from vastly different vantage points. Whitman expressed himself through plain, even rough language that captured the transcendental spirit. Vaughan Williams drew ideas about the connection of people across time and place through English folksongs and hymnody, despite his unapologetic agnosticism.
But the English composer, moved by the elder poet’s words, remained drawn to matters beyond the merely material and set several of Whitman’s texts to music while in the throes of youth. None capped his compositional maturity quite like A Sea Symphony, which the MIT Symphony Orchestra offered in a rare local performance at Kresge auditorium last weekend. Playing with conviction, the young musicians conveyed all the music’s—and perhaps their own—big-hearted aspirations.
The prospect of composing a symphony weighed upon Vaughan Williams so much so that he didn’t fully embrace writing one until he was 30 years old. Even then, he sought to break away from most traditions—Mahler’s contemporaneous Eighth Symphony is another contemporary example—by interweaving chorus, solo vocal, and orchestral parts across its movements.
Making a convincing reading of the whole has always been yeoman’s work. And conductor Adam Boyles rose to the challenge by letting the lines surge, abate, and change emotional directions with natural ease.
From the onset, Boyles and the musicians eschewed power in favor of long-rang sweep. Phrases coursed with momentum even as some details went missing. The orchestra played with a presence that hinted at the focused intensity of its rehearsals. While the result may have lacked the finer details, Boyles judged the balances and tempos smartly, and the musicians gave the piece their all.
So too did the MIT chorus. Prepared by Ryan Turner, the young singers rendered their exposed parts with uniform blend, bold diction, and commanding presence when called upon. Many sections of this score tilt toward hymnic serenity. In those moments, the chorus was at its best, singing with hushed intensity that still managed to project the hopes embedded in the words and music. The singers also worked in ideal tandem with the guest soloists. Baritone Edward Vogel brought clarion tone and conviction to his featured moments. “Today a brief recitative” burst forth with bold authority. Soprano Meredith Hansen seesawed between gleaming tone and endearing sympathy. “Flaunt not, O Sea” conveyed as much resplendence as distance as her line soared over the ensemble.
Boyles commanded the forces with assurance, letting the music ebb and flow while teasing out the subtleties of light and darkness. The Scherzo bounded. The high points of the finale erupted with radiance. But the final bars, with its faint shimmers and low rumblings that recall the ending of Also Sprach Zarathustra, revealed an existential dilemma as Whitman’s text calls for listeners to “steer for deep water only.” Boyles tastefully held the final harmonies as if clinging to the last vestiges of what remains familiar. The music, which gradually faded into silence, hinted at death. The path may be clear, this performance seems to say. But the way forward will be anything but easy.
The concert opened with a short movement from Emmanuel Séjourné’s Concerto for Marimba and Strings, which turned the spotlight on MIT concerto competition winner Sophie Lin.
Lin’s technique is crisp and lively, and she tore through the rippling arpeggios with aplomb. As the strings sawed through the jagged cross rhythms, Lin let her phrases unfold freely, as if an improvisation. Boyles, laying back, allowed for the soloist and orchestra to intermingle as if deep conversation. At times fiery, at other sullen, the conversation felt so familiar that Lin and the strings could finish each other’s sentences. Everyone had something to say, and they said it plainly. And that’s about as Whitmanesque as one can get.