For record collectors fed up with musical 'barbed wire', George Lloyd's symphonies are doing nicely (the composer's nephew told me recently and jubilantly that all Lloyd's records have more than covered their recording costs), so the time is ripe for the entry of the William Alwyn symphonies into the CD catalogue. They were recorded by Lyrita in the LP era, but it is also good to see the new Chandos digital recording of No. 4, an extraordinarily fine work. I have listened to it a great deal recently, making close comparisons between the composer's own recording and the new Hickox version. It would be normal received wisdom for me to suggest that the composer's performance has greater penetration and intensity—first recordings are usually special—but my impression is that this is not so.
The two accounts are remarkably alike, even though in the first movement the composer's timing is a minute and a half shorter than Hickox's, and in the finale he saves a minute and a quarter, Hickox's extra spaciousness does not mean that either the tension or the momentum flags. Indeed, when one compares his phrasing of the long and beautiful string cantilena which opens the Adagio e molto calmato of the Passacaglia finale, its ebb and flow and dynamic gradations suggest either that Hickox has listened to the composer's LP or has a remarkable, instinctive feeling for the music (probably both).
At the opening of the first movement a horn melisma soon appears, which the LSO principal plays with a touch more intensity at its climax, and later (8'57'') Hickox accents the string theme more forcefully than the composer, elsewhere the LPO brass snarls and bites more readily under Alwyn. This is not to say that the big, almost Stravinskian climax which comes about six minutes or so into the work (Chandos timing) is not stridently powerful in the hands of Hickox and the LSO. The scherzo too may have a bit more bite with Alwyn (as do the curiously plangent woodwind squawks at 7'22'' of the opening movement of the Lyrita disc), but this is at least partly caused by the more leonine Lyrita sound. The centrepiece of the scherzo brings a glorious blossoming from the violins which is equally thrilling in both performances, while at the very end of the symphony the final brass peroration has great forceful thrust from the composer. However, with the LSO and Hickox the slightly richer, more spacious Chandos recording adds to the weight of sonority. In short, these are both highly compelling performances of a remarkably diverse and well-argued symphony, bursting with lyrical ideas and melodic in the way traditional music is communicative, without being old-fashioned. So now let us consider couplings.
Those on Chandos are relatively slight. The Elizabethan Dances aren't very early Elizabethan but the languid ''Waltz'' (No. 2) is rather charming and the ''Poco Allegretto'' (No. 5) is even more so; the vigorous numbers are more conventional. The Festival March, written for the 1951 Festival of Britain, is an agreeable occasional piece, although its big tune isn't as memorable of those of Walton or Elgar. Yet if you want a modern digital recording of the Fourth Symphony, these are acceptable makeweights. On the other hand, Lyrita offer the Symphony No. 1. It is a work teeming with ideas, and quite often reminds one of Alwyn's film music (which is not meant to be a pejorative remark). With its ample scoring the composer does go over the top a bit at times and this is not nearly so cogently argued a piece as the Fourth, although it has a rather appealing Adagio. It is splendidly played and the Lyrita recordings (from the 1970s) have been remastered most skilfully: the sound has body, weight, brilliance, and fine presence and clarity too.'