★★★★☆ Brett Weymark’s foam-flecked Vaughan Williams conquers the high seas.

Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
September 22, 2016

Were two artists ever as intimately simpatico as Ralph Vaughan Williams and the poet Walt Whitman? Though separated by a couple of generations, no-one quite brought out as much in the English composer than the visionary Yankee wordsmith who coined such memorable phrases and “I sing the body electric”, “Oh Captain! My Captain!”, and “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d”. Composers from Hindemith to John Adams have been inspired by Whitman’s semi-transcendental commentaries on life, eternity, the pity of war, and even on sexuality, but nothing quite compares to RVW’s longest and greatest Whitman setting, the four movement, 80-minute long A Sea Symphony.

For their concert with Sydney Youth Orchestra, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs had commissioned a new work to a Whitman text from Australian composer Carl Vine, cunningly scored for the same forces as A Sea Symphony, and while weighing it at a lightweight 20 minutes or so it still packed quite a punch. Vine has something of Samuael Barber’s felicitous way with a text setting. Combined with his easy on the ear lyricism and warm harmonies, that artful effortlessness ensured...