Repertoire: The BEST and WORST Vaughan Williams 5th Symphony

I remember an American critic complaining that VW's music was "relentlessly lovely". I'm sure he meant it to sting, but if I were a composer, that's the kind of insult I would like to get.

Sibelius got to hear the piece on radio in Scandinavia sometime after the war and loved it. He wrote Vaughan Williams saying he was honoured to accept the dedication.

Magical, ethereal, glorious. The pinnacle of English orchestral music, in my view; the Romanza is the one piece I would play for non-classical folks who are moved by the aching themes in great film & TV scores, because they could not help but fall in love with it. Just listened to the 5th again for RVW's 150th -- best wishes to all on the joyous occasion.

Previn did so much for British music. His work with the LSO (especially on RCA) was remarkably consistent. Simply the best!

The Romanza from his 5th symphony was played today at HM the Queen's funeral.

I'm a total RVW-head. I own, I believe, every recording of this work, including ones that didn't make the cut here. Some are good (Carlos Kalmar), some are okay (Alexander Gibson), some are lousy (Mark Elder, Roger Norrington). For me the standout is Bryden Thomson. I find it to be the most luminous recording of this most luminous work. Everything is shaped to perfection, & it just glows, glows, glows. I find Thomson's RVW to be underrated in general (I take your point about some of the sonics), but besides the 6th & 7th, I think they're all fairly well in the front rank. Thanks so much for the video. Looking forward to the rest. Consider doing an RVW book!

Imagine what it must have been like to hear the London premiere of the 5th in 1943 in the midst of war and blitz. What consolation and what a restorative for a stressed people. As then, now!

One of my very favorite works. I came to it through the Menuhin recording, and glad to see it makes your list (and you're right, the two piano concerto coupling is great as well: fell in love with both pieces). I've heard Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony perform the symphony a couple of times, and their live performance was very good as is the recording (and their live performances of the other pieces on the recording were likewise very good). Thanks for this talk, Dave.

Michael Collins told an interviewer that he re-recorded the Finzi for BIS because his previous (Chandos) recording was with a BBC orchestra, which meant that Classic FM refused to play it. I guess they have a no-BBC policy. So to get those sweet, sweet Finzi radio royalties, Collins did it again, and he tacked on RVW 5 just to prove that he can really conduct.

Thanks David, really enjoyed this video as with all your recent Vaughan Williams contributions. My feeling is in the last 40 years or so RVW's music is gradually becoming more main stream & its videos like this, that are making this happen. While I do not always agree with all of your performance assessments 100%, it is obvious you are also a dedicated fan of RVW's music. RVW's Fifth Symphony has a special place in the repertoire and even my local Symphony, the Sydney Symphony, have played this piece twice in the last few years,

I loved your dismissal of the Haitink disc. Nice comedic timing!

Hands down, my favorite symphonic work in all of classical music. The first version heard often becomes the standard to which others are compared, and fortunately Previn's with the LSO was my first exposure and remains my top choice. Bakels' and Manze's (whose live Proms performance I preferred even to his excellent recording) are very close second choices. I bought Haitink's box set--sound unheard--because his Debussy orchestral music was so extraordinary I thought he couldn't go wrong with this music. Big letdown! Anyway, thanks for doing this, enlightening and fun as always!

This is a wonderful survey, Dave. RVW’s 5th is hard to surpass in the sheer beauty department, and I was unaware of some of these recordings. I truly had no idea Michael Collins conducted, and a pairing with the Finzi Clarinet Concerto is too irresistible to pass up. I may have to hunt down the Previn/Coitus Institute if it can be had for less than a princely sum. HOWEVER, it is difficult to argue with your Previn however. A lot of agreement on the thread. Slatkin is my runner-up of those I’ve heard.

Thanks so much for this! The Fifth is one of my favourites ever since I was introduced to it by a friend in my arrogant twenties. Thrilled to hear your opinion about it! This May, Andrew Davis came to Berlin Konzerthaus and conducted it most wunderfully, to an audience (Germany!), that hardly knew the thing, but in the end turned out to be utterly mesmerized. About that Sibelius homage -- I beleive it was the Fourth, coming in with the same C-D-F# sequence in the very beginngin, rather than the Sixth, but I might be wrong there. Again, thanks!

Dave, I have been a big RVW fan since university days. My Masters thesis was a stylistic analysis of his Mass. Three of them are translated over to his orchestral music: his synthesis of folk music, the revival of Tudor and Jacobean musiv, and his study on orchestration with Ravel in 1908, when Ravel was barely on the radar in England. The 5th was the very first CD I purchased, and it was the Handley on EMI Eminence. Since then, I have purchased the Slatkin, the Menuhin, and the Boult (with the 3rd on EMI) . I love them all. I have over 40 CDs covering his whole ouervre, so I definitely a RVW enthusiast. BTW, I bought the Haydn Paris Symphonies by Brueggen, and the London Symphonies with Harnoncourt, and now I have become a Haydn Symphony fan. Thanks for turning me on to them.

I have the Bryden Thomson version on a single CD release with the Lark Ascending...it's my favorite among the recordings I've heard so far, but I'm now curious about the Previn - thanks for pointing it out!

The Thomson recording is available to stream and the single CD can often be found on the used market for a sensible price. Great sound, with plenty of body even in the quiet sections. Warmly recommended.

My favorite work and the one that started my classical music journey many years ago.

I have the Slatkin version - the Romanza tears your heart out.

Ralph Vaughan Williams (RVW) is my favourite composer, bar none; and I have many CD recordings of his works; including all nine symphonies and 'The Pilgrim's Progress' (two versions). The odd thing is that RVW, although born in rural Gloucestershire, was a city man, who loved London (as it used to be!). Yet - as you point out - so much of his finest music has an ethereal quality to it which is very remeniscent of the English pastoral idyll. My introduction to him was in Bury Fields County Primary School, Odiham (Hampshire), because the imaginative Headmistress, Miss Cox, would have us all enter the Hall for morning assembly, with classical music playing. Thus, I encountered the 'Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis' at the tender age of six. Now aged seventy-one, I bless that lady for her introduction to RVW, just after his death.