Gerhard’s Concerto for Orchestra was an instant success at the 1965 Cheltenham Festival, which had commissioned it. Its avowed purpose was to highlight the orchestra as an entity rather than in its constituent sections or instruments (although many, especially the percussion, make major contributions); and while it may not have the immediate universal appeal of, say, Kodaly’s or Bartok’s works with the same title (written in a very different idiom some 20 or so years earlier), it has never been surpassed for its imaginative handling of instrumental sonorities or for its virtuoso demands on the players. It has to be said right away that this is a stunning performance: not merely does the BBC SO rise spectacularly to the work’s demands, but Bamert shows himself exceptionally skilful at securing internal balances. An informative booklet-note explains the work’s structure and some of its particularities, but it is worth quoting Gerhard’s own words: ‘My favourite listener is one who does not read explanatory programme notes … I stand by the sound of my music, and it is the sound that must make the sense.’ So instead of trying to follow the intricate series of developments of the basic tone-row (from which, according to the commentator, eight ideas are derived) or to analyse the remarkable final section of the work (‘one of the most inventive stretches of music written since the Second World War’), accept his words: ‘a work of music takes shape only in the mind of the listener.’
So far, Gerhard’s Second Symphony has been represented on disc only by the revised version (Metamorphosis) which had had to be completed by Alan Boustead (Auvidis Montaigne, 2/97); but if Gerhard may have felt the original too cerebral (though he ‘let the stream of cerebration take a free course’) it was at least all his, and the decision now to record it for the first time – tough going as it undoubtedly is – is very welcome to all interested in the mental processes of this exceptional musician. This is not the place to detail the differences: suffice it to say that the opening of the work’s second section, with its clicking percussion, remains as hauntingly mysterious as ever, and the final nightmare palindrome scherzo (of which only a fraction exists in the Boustead version) is one of his most astonishing creations. With first-class recording throughout, this is an essential disc for all admirers of Gerhard.'