Music: The Old Master

The audiences that crowd into London's Albert Hall are a respectful lot. But the 5,000 music lovers there last week were more reverential than usual. They had come for England's biggest musical event of the year—the premiere of the Symphony No. 6 of 73-year-old Ralph Vaughan Williams.

They heard four uninterrupted movements that went on for an hour and a half. The first three were tuneful, brassy and sometimes stridently dissonant. The last movement some found uncomfortably soft; muted strings and wood winds seemed to keep restoring to life a passage that was repeatedly ready to die. When the theme finally expired...