Vaughan Williams: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4

This is a really good performance [of the Pastoral]. On one level Martyn Brabbins is superbly alert to the intricacies of the musical texture. After on hearing I got the score and listened again... — BBC Music Magazine, March 2020, More…

Release Date: 3rd Jan 2020
Catalogue No: CDA68280
Label: Hyperion
Series: Brabbins Vaughan Williams Symphonies
Length: 80 minutes

Gramophone Magazine

January 2020

Editor's Choice
Presto Recording of the Week

10th January 2020
BBC Music Magazine

March 2020

Orchestral Choice

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Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 3 'A Pastoral Symphony'

37:31

$6.05

$7.45

$9.20

Elizabeth Watts (soprano)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Martyn Brabbins

I. Molto moderato

10:35

$1.50

$1.85

$2.30

II. Lento moderato

8:58

$1.50

$1.85

$2.30

III. Moderato pesante

6:17

$1.00

$1.25

$1.55

IV. Lento

11:41

$2.05

$2.50

$3.05

Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 4 in F minor

34:16

$5.50

$6.80

$8.45

BBC Symphony Orchestra
Martyn Brabbins

I. Allegro

8:27

$1.50

$1.85

$2.30

II. Andante moderato

10:46

$1.50

$1.85

$2.30

III. Scherzo: Allegro molto –

5:32

$1.00

$1.25

$1.55

IV. Finale con epilogo fugato: Allegro molto

9:31

$1.50

$1.85

$2.30

Vaughan Williams: Saraband 'Helen'

9:05

$1.50

$1.85

$2.30

David Butt Philip (tenor)
BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Chorus
Martyn Brabbins

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Recording of the Week, Vaughan Williams Symphonies from Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Symphony Orchestra

10th January 2020

Martyn Brabbins continues his Vaughan Williams cycle with the sharply-contrasted Third and Fourth symphonies, as well as the première of a newly-restored work for tenor, chorus and orchestra.

Compelling performances of two very different symphonies, the complex visionary pantheism of the ‘Pastoral’ an ideal foil for the unbridled ferocity of No 4. An added incentive, Martyn Brabbins’s idiomatic realization of Vaughan Williams’s choral Saraband 'Helen' (a first recording) is a real discovery.

Reviews

March 2020

This is a really good performance [of the Pastoral]. On one level Martyn Brabbins is superbly alert to the intricacies of the musical texture. After on hearing I got the score and listened again – so many details I’d hardly noticed before, but there they were. On another level I’ve rarely, if ever, been so aware of this symphony as a subtle but sustained emotional narrative…Brabbins’s Fourth has many of the same virtues, plus an edgy, uncomfortable intensity of its own.

March/April 2020

[Symphony No. 3] when soprano Elizabeth Watts re-enters to bestow the final benediction, the effect is as moving as any recorded performance in living memory.

January 2020

One immediately feels Brabbins’s special affinity for this music in the numinous pacing of the first movement of the Pastoral Symphony... Brabbins and the Hyperion recording team bring a thrilling clarity to the heavier timbres of the Scherzo and the diaphanous, mercurial (even Holst-like) coda...Brabbins’s reading of the first movement of the Fourth Symphony has much of the familiar violence and ferocity that we know from this work.

February 2020

Brabbins produces a beautifully measured and contemplative reading... Elizabeth Watts...finds an ideal balance between an other-worldly rapture and a more humane warmth... without doubt a very impressive and deeply felt performance.

10th January 2020

Brabbins nevertheless gives [the third movement of the Pastoral] a sense of sarabande-like spaciousness...Watts’s vocalises book-ending the final movement are especially worthy of note...The Fourth Symphony could hardly be more contrasting; the performance lives up to the work’s reputation as a ferocious, dissonant one...Brabbins tailors his approach accordingly, with the complexity of Vaughan Williams’s textures calling forth a much-needed clarity of sound that allows the ear to pick out each motif.

12th January 2020

These fine performances let one take the measure of VW’s greatness; the brief, choral-orchestral Saraband Helen is an attractive filler.

12th January 2020

There is some great playing in the urgent, doomy opening of the first movement [of the Fourth] and in the strenuous polyphony of the frenetic finale, coolly directed by Brabbins in this much recommended landmark recording.

17th January 2020

This superlatively played album is topped off by an unfinished Vaughan Williams discovery, a vocal saraband, spun from Christopher Marlowe’s lines in Doctor Faustus about Helen of Troy. Welcome but minor, it’s perfect for lovers of fascinating morsels.

The Arts Desk February 2020

This “Pastoral” Symphony is unequivocally excellent...Brabbins taps into the underlying melancholy...Wind and brass solos are outstanding...Exceptionally good, and handsomely recorded too.

Vaughan Williams: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4

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Recording of the Week, Vaughan Williams Symphonies from Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Symphony Orchestra