London, Barbican: Vaughan Williams rarities

Extract

Film music, often considered a ‘Cinderella’ art-form, is really more of a ‘Sleeping Beauty’: to a ‘first approximation’, its entire history exists on films which we are never shown. Prefatory to the 2003 Musicians Benevolent Fund Royal Concert on 4 November, however, the Barbican cinema presented an early-evening resuscitation of no fewer than four long-dormant items connected in some way with Vaughan Williams, two of whose orchestral works were programmed to follow.