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This month, Donald Macleod takes a fresh look at one of Britain’s most popular composers, Ralph Vaughan Williams, as part of Radio 3's 'Vaughan Williams Today' season - marking the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Alongside programmes which delve into Vaughan Williams's life story and music in fascinating depth, over the course of four weeks and twenty programmes, Donald will also be talking to some of the leading authorities on Vaughan Williams to share and explore share new perspectives on a variety of overlooked and less well known aspects his life and work, forming a comprehensive and absorbing portrait of a composer whose body of work has had such an enduring imprint on British cultural life.

In the third week of this landmark series, Donald will focus on the years 1931-1947, a dramatic period in not just Vaughan Williams’ life, but in the wider world too, encompassing the Second World War. Vaughan Williams was 67 when Britain and France declared war on the Reich, so too old for active service, but he threw himself into contributing wherever he could to the war effort. Musically, this was another period when the composer suffered from a crisis of failing inspiration and creative drought as the political turmoil deepened around him, but it would also give rise to some of his finest music, including three of his best regarded Symphonies – numbers 4, 5 and 6.

Today, Donald explores Vaughan Williams’s life as World War II drew to its close, and how he fared in post-war Britain as he celebrated both his seventy-fifth birthday, and his golden wedding anniversary. There is also the premiere of a work which stunned audiences and critics alike – his Sixth Symphony.

Vaughan Williams
49th Parallel - The Invaders
National Philharmonic
Bernard Herrmann (conductor)

Vaughan Williams
Partita for Double String Orchestra - IV. Fantasia
London Festival Orchestra
Ross Pople (conductor)

Vaughan Williams
Concerto for Oboe and Strings in A minor - III. Finale
Nicholas Daniel (oboe & conductor)
Britten Sinfonia

Vaughan Williams
Symphony No 3, 'Pastoral Symphony' (excerpt)
London Symphony Orchestra
Andre Previn

Vaughan Williams
Song of Thanksgiving (excerpt)
Sir John Gielgud (narrator)
Lynne Dawson (soprano)
Corydon Singers
The London Oratory Junior Choir
City of London Sinfonia
John Scott (organ)
Matthew Best (conductor)

Vaughan Williams
Symphony No.6 in E minor - II. Moderato; III. Scherzo
London Symphony Orchestra
Antonio Pappano (conductor)

Producer: Sam Phillips