The 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams is a cause for much celebration and this month’s recommendable releases begin and end with his music – from the familiar to the downright obscure. Our Recording of the Month is a five-disc set of his symphonies from Manchester’s Hallé under Music Director Sir Mark Elder (Hallé CDHLD7557). 

“Of all the tributes on disc, few come with as persuasive a claim to attention as this complete symphony cycle by the Hallé Orchestra, with whom the composer had a long and fruitful relationship,” writes Michael Quinn. “At the helm is Mark Elder, who brings interrogative intelligence to bear on a body of work that drew from, but also re-defined the English symphonic tradition.”

New classical albums

Quinn singles out A Sea Symphony “paced with tidal surety and magisterial control by Elder, who balances intimacy and drama to gripping effect,” as well as Elder’s “painterly dynamic contrasts, telling way with detail and Barbirolli-like tempi choices” in A London Symphony. A Pastoral Symphony, he says, is “a thing of bucolic wonders, sylvan, silken and shot through with elegiac regret”. The Fifth Symphony is one of the set’s highlights with Elder...