In the earliest days of stereo a small American label called Everest distinguished itself by making a series of recordings of adventurous repertoire (an amazing amount of it English music) using 35mm three-track tape, which produced striking gains in spaciousness and fuller string and brass sound. The results (which make a ready comparison with the Mercury achievement), using the most modern remastering techniques for CD transfer, are most impressive. Under the auspices of Vanguard these recordings are being reissued, offering far more music than on the original LPs.
The LPO coupling of Malcolm Arnold's Third Symphony with Vaughan Williams's Ninth dates from 1958 and in a brief but touching spoken introduction to the Vaughan Williams Sir Adrian Boult tells us that the composer had died just seven hours before the sessions began. Not surprisingly the orchestra then play the work with considerable intensity of feeling and Boult's reading seems marginally tauter than his later EMI version.
Arnold (then in his late thirties) conducts his Third Symphony with a freshness and aplomb which produce an agreeably spontaneous chimerical feeling in the outer movements. The result has less weight (partly the result of the recording) and reveals less Angst than in the powerful recent Hickox version for Chandos, but remains very telling and the recording is remarkably spacious, especially in its brass sonorities.'