Vaughan Williams: A London Symphony (Original 1913 Version) / Butterworth: The Banks of Green Willow
Penned between 1911 and 1913 and first heard in May 1914, Vaughan Williams'sA London Symphonywas dedicated to the memory of George Butterworth (whose ravishing 1913 idyllThe Banks of Green Willowopens proceedings here). It's the original version that Richard Hickox and the LSO champion so eloquently on this sumptuous-sounding Chandos issue--and a very different beast it is fromVaughan Williams's final revisionof 1933.For starters, there's more than a quarter of an hour of extra material, much of it genuinely inspired and brimful of wondrous poetry. VW's scoring, too, was never more colorful, and it's surely not too fanciful to detect many a foreshadowing of Holst'sThe Planets. More significant, the work takes on a darker, tragic dimension (nowhere more potently, perhaps, than in the slow movement), and there's an astonishing passage in the expanded epilogue that even anticipates the opening movement of the 1921Pastoral Symphony. In hindsight, VW made all the right decisions (the scherzo's second half, haunting though it is, pales next to the shuddering intensity of the revised coda), but no one should miss the opportunity to experience his original thoughts in all their epic sweep and tingling vitality. Utterly compulsive listening, then, and a "must buy" if ever I heard one.--Andrew Achenbach