Tuba Concerto (Vaughan Williams) Tuba Concerto (Vaughan Williams) The Concerto in F Minor for Bass Tuba and Orchestra by British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was written in 1954 for Philip Catelinet, principal tubist of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), who together gave the premiere on 13 June 1954 with Sir John Barbirolli conducting. The same musicians made the work’s first recording that same year. While at first viewed as the eccentric idea of an aging composer, the concerto soon became one of Vaughan Williams' most popular works, and an essential part of the tuba repertoire. The work is in three movements: A performance commonly
Symphony No. 9 (Vaughan Williams) to Sargent's as having been "an unsatisfactory first performance." Percy Grainger, however, who was in Carnegie Hall for the US premiere, told Ursula Vaughan Williams that Stokowski's performance "seemed a perfect one in every way and the exquisite beauty and cosmic quality of this immortal work struck me as being ideally realised." Alain Frogley considers Vaughan Williams's last symphony to be one of his greatest works. Hugh Ottaway and Alain Frogley call this symphony "the most impressive achievement" of Vaughan Williams's final decade and remark that "both outer movements employ highly original structures – the carefully graded and layered engineering