The composer

Vaughan Williams began writing symphonies comparatively late – it was on his 38th birthday that his first of them, A Sea Symphony, was premiered at the Leeds Festival in 1910. A further eight would follow, hugely wide-ranging in style and content, from the vivid cityscape depiction of A London Symphony (1913) to the violent foreboding of the dissonant Fourth (1935) and cautious optimism of the Fifth, composed during the darkest days of World War II. His final symphony, the Ninth, was premiered in April 1958, four months before his death at the age of 85.