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This was Sir Adrian's second complete recording of Vaughan William's symphonies. Initially the records were issued separately as they appeared. Then in 1972, they were all reissued at a reduced price as a nine-LP boxed set and on this latest reissue they are accommodated on seven LPs which have been re-mastered.
True, getting the symphonies on to only seven LPs has meant the loss of a few of the smaller pieces originally coupled with them; but the symphonies are what matters to most people and they have been fitted on to the LPs without any of that tiresome business of having to go to another record to find the finale of a symphony you have already been enjoying. Most of the symphonies are complete either on one record or on one side; and if you do have to turn for a finale (as with No. 5), the rest of that second side is filled with a quite separate work—like The Wasps Overture.
Since everybody must know by now the sheer authority which Boult brought to everything he conducted, it is enough to add a few odd comments. Did any composer's First Symphony (or any choral work, for that matter) start with such inspiration as A Sea Symphony does? It is not merely the opening, with the fanfare in the minor key and then the choir's plunge into the radiance of the totally different major key on the word "sea" in "behold, the sea itself!". It goes on to the later return to that passage and the same words, when you think it will be merely a repeat—same words, chords and music. But Vaughan Williams has an ace up his sleeve and at this point all voices join in a great unison after the word "sea" and leap up to a high note at "itself". What a start to a first symphony! And how splendidly Boult increases the excitement by obviously feeling it himself. Sheila Armstrong is fine in this work, while John Carol Case can never have sung better.
Number 2, the London Symphony is known to have been Vaughan Williams's favourite, though my own love is the sensitive and subtle No. 5. But if you do want the London on its own, may I draw your attention to Vernon Handley's excellent performance on the CfP label reviewed above.
Of the Pastoral (No. 3) Vaughan Williams wrote something like "I've written a Symphony. Four movements, all of them slow". The work sounds dull, put like that, but it never is; and anyway, the movements are not quite "all of them slow". Nobody, apparently not even the composer, can really love No. 4; but you may easily be knocked flat by it. To quote him again, he said that he didn't like it; but it was what he meant.
I confess I have never come to terms with the last two symphonies (nor, apparently, has the concert-going public): they have their fine qualities and perhaps one should not be surprise if a composer, at the end of a long life, sounds a bit retrospective and the idiom is more apparent than the originality. HMV's admirable booklet has notes by Michael Kennedy who remarks that he believes No. 9 will one day be ranked among its creator's finest works. Here, at any rate, on these splendid records is the chance to get to know the music better by more frequent hearing than we are allowed in the concert hall. This set is a real bargain in every sense of the word.
Cassettes, by the way, are available for the first time: and readers may also like to know that ITV is transmitting on April 8th a Ken Russell film about the composer.
TH