Nimbus may just have stolen a march over Chandos, with their world premiere recording of Parry's First Symphony, but there can be little doubt that this latest instalment in the revelatory Parry series from Matthias Bamert and the London Philharmonic Orchestra leads the field in this work. In May, MK concluded his review of William Boughton's performance of the piece with the English Symphony Orchestra, by expressing some scepticism over its chances of ever securing a place in the repertory, and one wonders whether his reaction might have been more positive had he listened to Bamert first.
Bamert certainly has an innate sympathy for the spacious and monumental qualities of Parry's music, and his breadth and urgency make a strong case for this work from the very opening bars. Boughton's response to the Con fuoco marking of the first movement sounds tame and lethargic alongside the gripping thrust of Bamert, who also draws constant attention to the cyclic components of this symphony; areas of critical structural detail which can easily become obscured, particularly in the over-reverberant setting used for the Nimbus disc. There is some glorious solo horn playing from the LPO principal horn at the opening of the Andante, in which Boughton becomes bogged down by Parry's Quasi adagio indication. Bamert finds just the right basic pulse here, and sustains the movement with an unhurried natural eloquence.
Both conductors take a similar view of the scherzo, with its progressive double trio, but again the finer inner details (particularly the contributions of the ESO wind players) are all but lost in the indeterminate ambience of the Great Hall of Birmingham University. Bamert draws all the various strands of symphonic thought together with unfaltering security in the finale, where the cyclic elements return with renewed force, and he ensures that the work concludes in triumph, rather than self-conscious rhetoric. This superb Chandos disc also includes Parry's Concertstuck for orchestra, and once again Bamert comes close
to convincing us that this plainly neo-Germanic offering is a great deal more satisfactory than it really is. The symphony, however, is a work of remarkable strength and insight, and deserves more general recognition.'