Posted by Rick Denney on April 22, 2002 at 15:32:35:
A friend of mine recently attended a Dallas Symphony performance of the Vaughan Williams Symphony in F Minor. He is almost as much a Vaughan Williams fanatic as am I, and he is also a highly experienced and critical listener even if he is a former oboist. He thought the performance was spectacular, and I'm extremely annoyed that with all the business travel I do I could not think of a business trip that would have taken me to Dallas for the performance.
Mike Sanders once expressed to me his opinion that this was perhaps the most difficult tuba part in the repertoire, and when I follow along in the pocket score that I have, I can well imagine how true that is. It is monstrously technical and rangy, but you can't really get away with a small tuba--the sound of this symphony often requires the moving of earth. It also has a good solo in the third movement. I'd love to hear Matt Good's recounting of how the rehearsals went and what it was like to play this rarely performed work, in addition to how the audience took it.
Rick "who lived in Dallas before Litton started taking such risks" Denney