The 'great' works of VW and Elgar should be played everywhere. And Walton, Bax, Arnold, and Tippet and heaps of other what are called Pommie Composers in Australia. I guess it's why Dvorak's' purely Czech vocal music, ditto Martinu's songs, aren't played much outside the Czech Republic, to make an analogy with regard to the purely English works.
in Japan since the 1920s. Konoye gave the first performance in Tokyo (with what is now the NHK Symphony Orchestra) of Salut d'Amour. Elgar's works have been played in every decade since then, the symphonies since the 1980s. Japan has a better history of playing Elgar than France does – find me any major French orchestra to have played (let alone recorded) an Elgar symphony; I can think of at least five Japanese orchestras that have.
Walton hasn't been mentioned here - but he's played relatively often in Japan. Otaka has programmed his symphonies in Japan (he did a superb First symphony with the NHK). Off hand, I don't recall hearing much VW - Akeo Watanabe did Tallis Fantasia with the Japan Philharmonic. That's the only Japanese recording I can think of. The Japanese conductor Kazuyoshi Akiyama recorded the VW Second in Canada, where he conducted in Toronto for many years. Whether he conducted it in Japan I don't know.
Regarding the 'Transportability of Musical Sensibility', what I'm trying to get my head around is that Pre Bach after which the German/Austrian (same thing) composers ruled the waves, and then came the Berlioz-led French resurgence, the rise of the music of the Slavic nations, the scintillating refusal of Italians to be anything other than Italian - I head the great Semiramade Overture today and it put a big smile on my face - there was a kind of homogeneity of purpose. In other words, composers wrote sonatas, chamber music, symphonies, oratorios, operas, etc and it all combined with the musical ether. In the late 19th century the dread of politics took over, music became 'Nationalistic' hence what is known as 'The British sound', typified by Elgar and Pomp and Circumstance.
I'm listening as I write to Purcell, Arise My Muse, Z320. Apart from the language, there is nothing 'English' about this music. In other words, it's pure and simply resonates with Purcell's genius.
It seems to me, then, that music only got roped into the Nationalistc paradigm when the Industrial Revolution took over and nations competed not in trade or cultural interchange, but mainly on battlefields.
What I find great about the music of say, Bach, Beethoven, Bruckner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, and Mahler, is - like Purcell - its Univeritalty. The music of these composers is full of compassion for human suffering, it rejoices, it opens our hearts to each other.
This may explain why Bruckner, Bach and Beethoven are played in Japan and China, and Malaysia, but not VW or Elgar.
These are random thoughts, from the top of a bald head, brought on by wondering why Purcell and Britten are Univeral Geniuses and VW and Elgar are considered to be 'simply' English - apart from the handful of outstanding works of genius produced by both of them.
I hope readers were pleased with the collection of reviews celebrating the birth sesquicentennial. I wonder if anyone shares my irritation at the constant references to Vaughan Williams as a primarily "pastoral" composer. For all that he was a collector of folk songs, loved the English countryside and expressed that love in his music, so much of it is far more challenging than the justly famous "lollipops" like Dives and Lazarus , the Lark Ascending and Greensleeves - all of which which I love, but they are not the bulk or core of his work. The "Pastoral" symphony and the Romanza of the Fifth (which does not actually have much to do with the English countryside) notwithstanding, you have only to listen to his symphonies as a whole - especially nos. 4, 6 and 9 - to hear why the composer was irked by that label.
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