Vaughan Williams: Concerto for Two Pianos & A London Symphony (1920 version)

At times we miss the focused punch of one piano's combat with the orchestra…yet 20 fingers certainly bring a heightened percussive charge in the final section's 'fuga chromatica'. Either way... — BBC Music Magazine, December 2015 More…

Release Date: 27th Jul 2015
Catalogue No: CDLX7322
Label: Dutton
Series: Epoch

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Vaughan Williams: Piano Concerto in C for two pianos

version for two pianos and orchestra by Joseph Cooper in collaboration with the composer
Leon McCawley (piano), John Lenehan (piano)
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Martin Yates

Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 2 'A London Symphony'

Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Martin Yates

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This enthralling Vaughan Williams programme couples two wonderful alternative versions of great works. Vaughan Williams’s two-piano version of his craggy Piano Concerto reinforces its standing as in many ways the link between the Third and Fourth Symphonies. Here the barnstorming piano team of John Lenehan and Leon McCawley with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Martin Yates are thrilling in their traverse of this cherishable score. The programme is completed by the 1920 version of A London Symphony, not recorded since Goossens’s wartime 78s. Here, for the first time in modern sound, we have the opportunity of exploring those various moments that RVW deleted from the version generally played.

Reviews

December 2015

At times we miss the focused punch of one piano's combat with the orchestra…yet 20 fingers certainly bring a heightened percussive charge in the final section's 'fuga chromatica'. Either way it remains an idiosyncratic and fruitful work…Martin Yates and the Scottish National Orchestra sound equally at home in the atmospheric panorama of A London Symphony.

October 2015

This is the first recording of [A London Symphony] in its initial 1920 publication since Eugene Goossens's notable 1941 account…fascinating listening it makes, too, containing numerous subtle differences in orchestration…Martin Yates's conception is by no means devoid of spirit or fresh-faced observation…and he secures a characteristically big-hearted, sprightly response from the RSNO…here is an issue that many collectors will rightly find of great interest.

Vaughan Williams: Concerto for Two Pianos & A London Symphony (1920 version)

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