If you were to play Boughton's Third Symphony to a friend knowledgeable about English music and were to pass it off as a newly-discovered 'Symphony No. 0' by Elgar, you might take him in, at any rate during the first movement. in fact it was written in 1937, after the Fourth and and the First Symphonies, respectively, of Vaughan Williams and Walton, and even at its first performance in 1939 must have seemed to belong to another age. But what does that matter? For all its debt to Elgar and a few others, it stands in its own right as a well-constructed symphony and a splendid piece of music. For a symphony as beautiful as this to be virtually unknown doesn't say much for the promoters of British music. So, once agin, our gratitude to Hyperion, and to Vernon Handley, for recording a hidden treasure.
The tunes are distinctive and the work is colourfully and delicately scored, with most impressive writing for brass in the coda of the first movement. The Adagio contains a wistful and withdrawn central episode which, in its poetic beauty, is worthy of Elgar. There is a lively Scherzo and a finale that begins mysteriously before launching out into a dramatic expansive movement, ending grandiloquently but without pomposity. The symphony is enjoyably performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, although the strings sound undernourished in the Scherzo, and the recording is admirable.
The disc is filled out by Boughton's First Oboe Concerto, composed in 1936 for his daughter Joy, for whom Britten later wrote his Ovid Metamorphoses. This concerto is more astringent than the symphony and is scored for strings. Both the soloist's part and the accompaniment require considerable virtuosity; Sarah Francis is a supple soloist and is especially good in the intense slow movement, where an almost Straussian richness is achieved. Michael Hurd's admirable essay tells us that Boughton could not afford to travel from Gloucestershire to Oxford to hear the first performance; a sobering thought.'