Vaughan Williams, Andrew Manze

Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote nine symphonies, the first relatively late in life (he was 38 when A Sea Symphony set sail in 1910) and the last at the age of 85. Those in between form a canon that reveals a composer’s maturing musical voice while charting half a century of British music-making. Many would also say they chart half a century of turbulent world history, and perhaps none more so than the equally powerful Fifth and Sixth.

The Fifth – quintessential Vaughan Williams – was written in 1943 amid the hurly-burly of WWII. It contains, however, “the most benedictory and consoling music of our time,” wrote the critic Neville Cardus. Five years later, the turbulent Sixth shocked listeners out of...