Hallé announces their latest release, of Vaughan Williams’ masterpiece in a live recording from the stunning 2014 Bridgewater Hall performance.

Release follows hugely successful previous Vaughan Williams volumes including:

• Symphonies No.5 & No.8 (CD HLL 7533) – Sunday Times Album of the Week and Music Web Recording of the Month (April 2013); Gramophone ‘Editor’s Choice’ (May 2013)
• Symphony No.2 ‘London’/Oboe Concerto (CD HLL 7529) – BBC Radio 3 CD Review Disc of the Week (31 December 2011)

The work is a full-scale choral symphony (for soprano, baritone, chorus and orchestra) with a vast, mystical setting of texts by the American poet Walt Whitman.

Much of the music is descriptive of the sea, particularly The Waves, but in the other movements the sea becomes a metaphor for a voyage into eternity.

After a seven year gestation A Sea Symphony was premiered in October 1910 and was received rapturously, establishing Vaughan Williams as the leading English figure in the post-Elgar generation.

Conductor
Sir Mark Elder