After Handley's particularly fine recordings of the Sea Symphony and the Fifth Symphony, I find this new recording of the Sinfonia antartica just a little disappointing. He certainly gives us a performance of solidity and weight, and one immediately senses a concern to create some kind of symphonic unity out of VW's least symphonically structured symphony. Yet despite this it still comes over to me as a rather episodic performance. To be fair, I feel the problem lies more in the recording than in Handley's interpretation. Producer Andrew Keener opts for a fairly close sound, with plenty of clarity and a particularly wide dynamic range (excellent for passages such as the shattering 'ice fall' episode in the third movement, ''Landscape''). But there is also a tendency (intentionally or not) to emphasize certain instruments—particularly the wordless female chorus, the wind machine and the tuned percussion. That is not to say that there aren't some extremely good things about this performance (the opening of the third movement, ''Landscape'', has rarely sounded as atmospheric as it does here), it's just that the goose-pimple results that Handley normally achieves fail to materialize. Haitink's Gramophone Award-winning account on EMI, or Thomson and the LSO on Chandos remain top recommendations here.
Handley's Serenade to Music faces some stiff competition. Of the three versions of the work that VW produced, the original version for 16 vocal soloists and orchestra would be my personal recommendation, either in the historic recording under Sir Henry Wood, with the original soloists for whom the work was conceived (now available on Pearl), or Matthew Best's warm and beautifully characterized performance on Hyperion. The version for chorus and orchestra (heard here) certainly makes some lovely sounds, but inevitably something of the character of the text (the scene between Jessica and Lorenzo from Act 5 scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice) is lost. Handley's performance is shapely and warm with a beautiful sense of flow, and the chorus is nicely balanced against the orchestra. As an alternative (or indeed complement) to the original version this recording is well worth considering.'