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Donald Macleod explores the final, happy years of Vaughan Williams’s life, combining foreign travel with a busy social life in London and completing his final two symphonies.

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

In this, the final week of Composer of the Week’s landmark series, Donald will focus primarily on the years 1948-1958, the final decade of Vaughan Williams’s life. The composer was, by this point recognised as the Grand Old Man of English music, and for a younger generation of British composers had begun to represent the establishment. He was also beginning to feel his age but was still managing to surprise critics with some of his new works, and he showed little sign of slowing down, continuing to lead a busy life, and launching into new endeavours too: foreign travels which included a major tour of the US, a major house move, and, following the death of Adeline, a second marriage. Donald will also be speaking to Vaughan Williams experts Ceri Owen and Alain Frogley about Adeline Fisher and Ursula Wood, Vaughan Williams’s two wives, and about Vaughan Williams’s legacy, and the changing reception to his music since his death.

Today, Donald explores the final, happy years of the composer’s life, which saw him broaden his geographical horizons with a series of foreign travels, receive a standing ovation at the Royal Festival Hall for his eighty-fifth birthday, and complete his Eighth and Ninth Symphonies. He also has an interesting encounter with a gypsy traveller Juanita Berlin.

Symphony no 8 in D minor - II. Scherzo alla marcia; III. Cavatina
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski, conductor

Vision of Aeroplanes
Jeremiah Stephenson, organ
The Choir of St Michael's Cornhill
Jonathan Rennert, conductor

Symphony no. 9 in E minor - IV. Andante tranquillo
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Bernard Haitink, conductor

Prelude on Three Welsh Hymn Tunes
Band of the Grenadier Guards

Producer: Sam Phillips