The Symphony No.8 was dedicated to Sir John Barbirolli and, as with the ‘Antartica’ premiere, the first performance was remarkably fine, exciting the 83-year-old composer to write on the score ‘For Glorious John, with love and admiration from Ralph’.

Perhaps the composer was somewhat uncertain about several aspects of the new work: at a rehearsal of the symphony, in February 1956, he approached the trumpets and asked ‘Is that all right for you? I haven’t written anything too difficult for you?’. ‘It’s all right, Dr Vaughan Williams’, came the reply, ‘there’s nothing we can’t manage.’

Thankfully, we can hear on this preserved recording of the premiere, just what a magnificent first performance the work was given. Less than seven weeks later, Barbirolli and the Hallé inaugurated their new Pye Records contract with the first recording of the Symphony (available on SJB 1021).

Vaughan Williams’ Tuba Concerto is a magnificent composition – easily the finest such Concerto ever written. The recorded HMV performance, in this collection, is outstandingly good, but the work, fine as it is, does not seem to have inspired composers to write further for the genre, which has meant that the music has tended to be unjustly ignored. A similar fate has befallen another such work by Vaughan Williams – the Five Variants on ‘Dives and Lazarus’, composed for harp and string orchestra in 1939.

The collection of Vaughan Williams’ music on this CD demonstrates aspects not only of the composer but of the profound grasp of ‘Glorious John’ in Vaughan Williams’ varied means of expression, for not all conductors encompass the composer’s range as Barbirolli was able to do. Less challenging in their demands are two of Vaughan Williams’s best-known shorter orchestral works – the Overture to ‘The Wasps’ and the Fantasia on ‘Greensleeves’.

All these recordings offer a lasting testimony to Barbirolli's total mastery as one of the greatest conductors Britain has ever produced.

Contents:
- Symphony No.8 in D minor (dedicated to Sir John Barbirolli)
Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 2 May 1956
BBC Broadcast of the World Premiere

- The Wasps: Overture
Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 16 June 1953

- Tuba Concerto in F minor
Philip Catelinet (tuba)
Kingsway Hall, London, 14 June 1954

- Five Variants of ‘Dives and Lazarus’
Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 31 December 1953

- Fantasia on ‘Greensleeves’ (arr. Greaves)
Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 5 January 1954