On New Year's Day (a day I invariably find grim and depressing) one of my brighter interludes was on catching some of Tony Palmer's documentary about Ralph Vaughan Williams - called O thou transcendent - on TV. A bit later I decided I'd like to see the whole thing, so ordered the DVD, which arrived last week. Being a twentieth century classical music lover (rather than any kind of music student) for the past thirty-odd years, I was surprised to hear of so many musicians who dismissed RVW's work as second-rate. I'd heard Constant Lambert's comment about "a cow looking over a gate" but hadn't realised such views were as widespread as the film would have it. Palmer definitely had a biased agenda when making his film. He seemed determined to portray RVW as a tortured man whose anguish was shown in his music. To this end, he chose mainly dark and tempestuous extracts from a repertoire that, to me, hardly ever comes across that way. I was surprised to ...
Sometimes a grumpy old man, at others middle-aged but not past it yet. My blog title is a quote from a 1970s Doctor Who story - and, by the way, there is no pause before "probably"! That's the genius of Tom Baker's timing.