Posted by Rick Denney on February 24, 2000 at 05:40:50:
After making the comments I did a few days ago concerning the subject symphony, I felt a yearning to hear it again. But I'm on travel this week, and so I visited Tower Records (one can never have too many versions of a favorite work). I'm now listening to Roger Norrington conduct Vaughan Williams's 4th and 6th Symphonies. The recording is the most like RVW's own conducting of any modern recording. But, unlike the late-30's recording with the composer on the podium, the clarity of the recording is impeccable, and you can hear every single detail of the tuba part. Every single unnerving, nightmarish detail. Stunning. Get it--in my not-so-humble opinion it should be in the collection of every aspiring orchestral tubist. (Vaughan Williams, Ralph, Symphonies 4 and 6, Sir Roger Norrington DECCA PY 925). If you don't become a fan of Vaughan Williams after hearing it, the I pity you.
While I was at Tower, I picked up the recording mentioned previously of the Florida Philharmonic playing the Mahler 1. I echo the comments made earlier: It's a fine-sounding recording--one of the best of that work that I've heard. The orchestra plays beautifully, and Jay makes quite an impression. And they included the Blumine movement, which is beautiful in its own right and usually ignored. (Harmonia Mundi 907118) I wish the San Antonio Symphony, for which I've always had a soft spot, would take note--they could be making recordings like that if they had the will to do it.
I also found an old recording that fills a gap in my Eastman collection, of that group's 1959 recording of the Persichetti Symphony and the Lincolnshire Posy, etc. Does anyone remember who the tuba players were in the Eastman Wind Ensemble at that time?