A curious note on the box states “This recording was made in collaboration with the BBC Symphony Orchestra”. Seeing that they play in both works, I should have thought that was obvious. In fact, it was the BBC SO (albeit, understandably, with other personnel) which also made the first recordings of Gerhard’s First Symphony (under Dorati) in 1964 (HMV, 1/65 – nla) and of the Violin Concerto (under Colin Davis, with Yfrah Neaman) in 1971 (Argo, 2/72 – nla). Of the two works the Concerto – not only the first of Gerhard’s four but one of his earliest orchestral works in general – is much the more accessible, with its mingling of Spanish elements (in the outer movements anticipating the opera The Duenna, written shortly afterwards) and a lyrical, impressionistic dodecaphony most conspicuous in the central movement, intended as a tribute to his teacher Schoenberg on his 70th birthday and making use of the tone-row of his Fourth String Quartet. The orchestra’s tone, from the shimmeringly romantic, Szymanowskian opening onwards, is seductive and brilliantly reproduced; Charlier (more prominently placed than was Neaman) throws off his spectacularly virtuosic part with abandon; and the cut made in the first movement’s scherzando section in the earlier recording is opened up. The last movement is one of Gerhard’s most dazzlingly attractive.
The First Symphony is a tougher proposition, largely because of its athematicism (which the composer likened to non-representational painting) and absence of exact restatements (“as in bird-song”, said Gerhard); and it is shot through with a sombre hue connected, so a thoughtful booklet-note argues, with his near-fatal heart attack in 1952. But its profusion of invention, both of material and of colour (including, in the central Adagio, an orchestral simulation of electronic ‘white noise’), and its swings between tense, uneasy quiet and outbursts of almost uncontrollable violence are a constant fascination; and the huge, contrapuntally complex finale is quite masterly. A disc recommended with enthusiasm.'