Twenty-five years separate the two symphonies by William Walton. The First is a large work very much of its time: Sibelius filtered through jazzily syncopated rhythms. The finale gave the composer trouble, and the work was first played without its fourth movement (in 1934). The first full performance came a year later. As a result, the finale, with its fanfares that look forward to Walton’s Shakespearean film scores, seems to come from a different pen. The best performances integrate the four movements into a whole, which Karabits does here admirably despite the competition of Previn (a more exciting scherzo), Haitink (a more atmospheric slow movement), Slatkin (a more driven and relentless first movement) and others.

The shorter Second Symphony of 1960 was long regarded as a...