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Background -

Ralph Vaughan Williams OM (12 October 1872 – 26 August 1958) was an English composer and folk song collector. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over nearly fifty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century.

Vaughan Williams was born to a well-to-do family with strong moral views and a progressive social outlook. Throughout his life he sought to be of service to his fellow citizens, and believed in making music as available as possible to everybody. He wrote many works for amateur and student performance. He was musically a late developer, not finding his true voice until his late thirties; his studies in 1907–08 with the French composer Maurice Ravel helped him clarify the textures of his music.

Vaughan Williams is among the best-known British symphonists, noted for his very wide range of moods, from stormy and impassioned to tranquil, from mysterious to exuberant. Among the most familiar of his other concert works are Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910) and The Lark Ascending (1914). His vocal works include hymns, folk-song arrangements and large-scale choral pieces. He wrote eight works for stage performance between 1919 and 1951. Although none of his operas became popular repertoire pieces, his ballet Job: A Masque for Dancing (1930) was successful and has been frequently staged.

Two episodes made notably deep impressions in Vaughan Williams's personal life. The First World War, in which he served in the army, had a lasting emotional effect. Twenty years later, though in his sixties and devotedly married, he was reinvigorated by a love affair with a much younger woman, who later became his second wife. He went on composing through his seventies and eighties, producing his last symphony months before his death at the age of eighty-five. His works have continued to be a staple of the British concert repertoire, and all his major compositions and many of the minor ones have been recorded.

Robert Spano (born 7 May 1961, Conneaut, Ohio) is an American conductor and pianist. Since 2001 he has been Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO), and he served as Music Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic from 1996 to 2004. He is the Music Director of the Aspen Music Festival and School, beginning full-time responsibilities in the 2012 season.

Spano has gained national and international prominence in recent years, appearing with major orchestras and opera companies throughout the United States and Europe. He is regarded as an advocate of contemporary composers, and has earned a reputation for ambitious and adventurous orchestral programming and presentation.

In addition to raising his profile with, for example, appearances on the Late Show with David Letterman, Spano has made several prominent recordings with the ASO, which have garnered multiple Grammy Awards. Spano has also won the favor of many major music critics, and he is frequently mentioned as a candidate to lead any of the most prominent orchestras in the USA.

Named by Musical America as Conductor of the Year in 2008, Spano has won praise from several leading music critics, such as Justin Davidson of Newsday, Pierre Ruhe of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Bernard Holland of the New York Times, and Richard Dyer of the Boston Globe. Spano was recognized with the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts Conductors Award in 1994. He has also received honorary degrees from Bowling Green State University and the Curtis Institute of Music, and his recordings have won several Grammy Awards. He also was awarded the Ditson Conductor's Award in 2008.

A Sea Symphony is a piece for orchestra and chorus by Ralph Vaughan Williams, written between 1903 and 1909. Vaughan Williams' first and longest symphony, it was first performed at the Leeds Festival in 1910, with the composer conducting. The symphony's maturity belies the composer's relative youth when it was written (he was 30 when he first began sketching it). One of the first symphonies in which a choir is used throughout the work and is an integral part of the musical texture, A Sea Symphony helped set the stage for a new era of symphonic and choral music in Britain during the first half of the 20th century. The work is sometimes referred to as the Symphony No. 1.

This beautifully recorded, no-nonsense, not overly sentimental, quick-tempo account of Vaughan Williams's lush choral symphony is most welcome. It's a work that matches the mystical--Walt Whitman's poetry--with some folk like sea rhythms Vaughan Williams tosses into the mix. Though it's perhaps not as warm as some versions, conductor Robert Spano opts for lots of excitement in the grand moments ("Sail forth" in the last movement, for instance). The warmth is written into the music anyway and is present no matter what. The second movement's stillness is as impressive as the "perfect storm" sections. The playing of the Atlanta Symphony is big and beautiful, and soprano Christine Goerke sings brightly and with ease. Her voice is just the right weight to ride the climaxes and sound intimate in the gentler moments. This is highly recommended. --Robert Levine

It looks like a CD. It plays on all your CD players. But this Hybrid Super Audio CD (SACD) is much, much more. Created by Sony and Philips – the people who invented the CD – this is actually a two-layer disc. And both layers pack an incredible story.

From the earliest digital recordings and 16-bit Compact Disc on up to even the latest 24-bit recordings, digital audio has always used multi-bit PCM technology. Until now. Now there is Direct Stream Digital recording. A one bit system that´s fundamentally different. Thanks to an amazing 2,822,400 samples per second, you get audio performance that no other format can deliver. Where CD frequency response extends to 20,000 Hz, DSD technology can theoretically reach 100,000 Hz. Where CD has a dynamic range of 96 dB, DSD recording can achieve 120 dB across the entire audible range. Thanks to DSD technology, the SACD difference is breathtaking. If you care passionately about music, then SACD will inflame that passion as never before.

Even the SACD´s 16-bit layer can sound better, if it´s based on a Direct Stream Digital or an analogue studio master. The Super Bit Mapping Direct process can be used to down-convert to the 16-bit CD format, which enables you to hear more of the original master.

So by all means, enjoy this disc on a standard CD player. But for an unforgettable audio experience, you have really got to hear it on a new Super Audio CD player.

This listing is for a very rare audiophile, Hybrid SACD title - an OPENED, Near Mint Hybrid SACD (can be played on all types of CD players) PRESSED and ISSUED by TELARC of a highly collectible title - a superb title featuring -

Vaughan Williams // Spano

Hybrid SACD title and music on this disc -

A Sea Symphony

(Symphony No. 1 - Poems by Walt Whitman)

Track Listings:

A Sea Symphony
1 A Song For All Seas, All Ships 17:26         
2 On The Beach At Night, Alone 9:36
3 Scherzo: The Waves 7:33
4 The Explorers 26:13

Performers on this Hybrid SACD include -

Robert Spano, conductor

Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

Christine Goerke, soprano

Brett Polegato, baritone

The Hybrid SACD is from the TELARC series of audiophile HYBRID Multichannel SACDs.

  • Hybrid SACD catalog # SACD 60588
  • Hybrid SACD - plays on all SACD and CD players
  • Hybrid SACD made in the USA
  • Hybrid SACD issued in 2002

The Hybrid SACD, JEWEL CASE AND INSERTS are all in Near MINT condition! The SACD was play tested in our audio system and it performed perfectly. There are no marks on the reflective side of the disc that we could see, even under strong, white light.

This CD is an audiophile quality pressing (any collector of fine MFSL, half speeds, direct to discs, Japanese/UK pressings etc., can attest to the difference a quality pressing can make to an audio system).

Don't let this rarity slip by!!!