Bryden Thomson's Chandos series of the Vaughan Williams symphonies becomes more distinguished as it progresses. The high standard of recording quality has been maintained throughout. This London Symphony was recorded in a church and there is a certain amount of reverberation but it suits this score, which is the most expansive and colourful in the cycle and needs more room to expand, as it were. The climaxes of the slow movement and the finale, for example are superbly recorded, so that we receive the full splendour of the LSO's excellent playing. My only criticism of the performance by the orchestra is that the first viola solo in the slow movement is not as good as it might have been.
Haitink's EMI recording is something special in that, as I wrote when it first came out, it takes a European view of a symphony that does, after all, contain many influences from the other side of the Channel for all its so-called nationalism. Too much is made by his detractors of Vaughan Williams's 'insularity'. Boult (EMI) and Barbirolli (EMI—LP only) both knew the Edwardian London which the composer enshrined in his music and their interpretations have a nostalgic authority, if such a thing is possible. Previn (RCA), on the other hand, is not as comfortable in this work, I feel, as in the later symphonies and occasionally gives it a transatlantic brashness.
Thomson approaches the symphony as a classic of our century and finds tragic drama in its picture of London from dawn to dusk. His interpretation intensifies when he reaches the Scherzo. The first two movements are well done, but it is in the third and fourth that this performance becomes outstanding. The Scherzo, with its nocturnal pub scene featuring an accordeon player, is vividly characterized and the coda of the movement, one of the greatest passages in English orchestral music, has never been recorded better. In the finale, the brass playing is ecstatic in its power and nobility. With the bonus of a lively performance of a much later work, the lovable Concerto grosso for strings, this is a notable issue.'