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Vaughan Williams - Symphonies 3 & 4, Saraband ‘Helen’ | Hyperion CDA68280

Vaughan Williams - Symphonies 3 & 4, Saraband ‘Helen’

£13.60

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Label: Hyperion

Cat No: CDA68280

Barcode: 0034571282800

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Release Date: 3rd January 2020

Gramophone Editor's Choice

Contents

Artists

Elizabeth Watts (soprano)
David Butt Philip (tenor)
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra

Conductor

Martyn Brabbins

Works

Vaughan Williams, Ralph

Saraband 'Helen'
Symphony no.3 'Pastoral Symphony'
Symphony no.4 in F minor

Artists

Elizabeth Watts (soprano)
David Butt Philip (tenor)
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra

Conductor

Martyn Brabbins

About

Compelling performances of two very different symphonies, the complex visionary pantheism of the ‘Pastoral’ an ideal foil for the unbridled ferocity of No.4. An added incentive, Martyn Brabbins’s idiomatic realization of Vaughan Williams’s choral Saraband ‘Helen’ (a first recording) is a real discovery.

‘Quite simply, a release not be missed’ - Gramophone (A Sea Symphony, CDA68245)

‘To be rated among the very best. Martyn Brabbins is a superb conductor’ - MusicWeb International (A Sea Symphony, CDA68245)

‘A superbly involving account … essential listening’ - Gramophone (A London Symphony, CDA68190)

‘Martyn Brabbins conducts the work with a sense of purposeful directness, likeably enhanced by the expressive warmth of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s response’ - BBC Music Magazine (A London Symphony, CDA68190)

Reviews

One immediately feels Brabbins’s special affinity for this music in the numinous pacing of the first movement of the Pastoral Symphony, which, inch by inch, moves towards its climax in the development. ... But it is in the finale ... that one feels the true pathos of this extraordinary work. ... the sense of ensemble [in Symphony no.4], engendered by the composer’s fascination for counterpoint and fugue, is hugely energising, not least in the powerful transition that links the Scherzo to the last movement, the bracing ‘oompah’ of the last movement’s opening march and the overwhelming density of the closing pages marked appropriately epilogo fugato.  Jeremy Dibble
Gramophone January 2020
... this is a really good performance [of the Pastoral Symphony]. One one level Martyn Brabbins is superbly alert to the intricacies of the musical texture. ... On another level I’ve rarely, if ever, been so aware of this symphony as a subtle but sustained emotional narrative. ... Here at last is a thoroughly modern version for anyone who as yet remains un-persuaded by the Pastoral. ... It’s all excellently recorded.  Stephen Johnson (Orchestral Choice)
BBC Music Magazine March 2020

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