He conducted two of his favorite showpieces: Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 1 (A Sea Symphony) and Handel’s Suite from Water, composed for a Thames River boating party. These continued the British character of last week’s gala program, which launched the RPO’s 85th year and Seaman’s 10th as music director.
(Found here in a review.)
… but that one word “Music” should have followed “Suite from Water”. And because I’m only just getting the brain moving (in my counterclockwise way), I didn’t even think “Suite from Water Music”. I just thought … “HUH?”
Yes. I’m slow to wake sometimes. But I have a student in 50 minutes and I promise I’ll be alert as can be by then. Really. (My student might not be, though. I can’t tell you how many students respond with the word “tired” when I ask how they are.)
That’s sloppier than it looks.
Which Suite from Water Music? Water Music consists of three suites. If you’re not playing one or another of them, but doing mix-and-match, you’re playing excerpts from Water Music, not a suite.
Also, it’s otiose to refer to “Symphony No. 1 (A Sea Symphony)”. Just call it “A Sea Symphony” as the composer did; he only numbered it later, retroactively. For his early symphonies the numbers are only useful if you’re discussing the symphonies as a group.