Set down at the Barbican the evening before the UK’s Covid lockdown for concert halls and theatres in March 2020, Antonio Pappano’s scrupulously prepared and urgently communicative reading of Vaughan Williams’s Sixth Symphony is a splendidly cogent affair, with no lack of sinewy thrust and tension levels a welcome notch or two higher than on Mark Elder’s Hallé account (10/17). Pappano plunges us into the opening maelstrom with thrillingly combustible results, the LSO responding with infectious application, while the second subject’s full flowering at one after fig 15 or 6'03" is paced to flowing perfection (its p cantabile and f dolce markings meticulously adhered to).

In the ensuing Moderato Pappano’s iron grip is nowhere more potently displayed than in that rivetingly expectant paragraph starting at fig 8 or 4'57", where pianissimo strings usher the softly insistent return of the trumpets’ minatory motif. The Scherzo, too, is both rhythmically agile and flecked with arresting detail, rising to a baleful climax in the Trio’s hair-raising reprise at fig 39 or 5'13" (unison ff tenuto violins and violas cutting through the fabric to telling effect). Best of all is the Epilogue: unswervingly concentrated, articulate (listen out for some remarkably seamless legato work from trumpets and trombones between figs 5 and 7, 4'39" and 6'03") and properly observant of RVW’s repeated sempre pp e senza crescendo request throughout.

Those imponderable closing measures distil a truly awesome mystery to cap an uncommonly impressive Sixth that not only rewardingly complements Andrew Manze’s altogether leaner, no less stimulating RLPO version (for me the finest component in his cycle – Onyx, 4/18) but is also, I think, deserving of a place alongside Boult (1949-50 and 1953, with the LSO and LPO respectively), Barbirolli (an unforgettable live performance with the Bavarian RSO from April 1970), Andrew Davis, Handley’s RLPO remake and Haitink at the head of the pack.

Recorded the previous December, the Fourth strikes me as somewhat less trenchant, though still full of notable virtues. Apart from the missing timpani at two after fig 10 or 3'27" in the first movement, the orchestral playing is alert, punchy and vital, Pappano stoking the fires to commendable effect from the outset. That said, I was most taken with the wealth of tender poetry he lavishes upon the first movement’s haunting Lento coda (not to mention the eloquence of the principal trumpet’s solo phrase that leads into it). Both here and in the slow movement Pappano’s pliable, humane approach recalls Mitropoulos and Bernstein in this music – high praise in my book! Might the transition into the finale have generated a touch greater coiled tension (something Ryan Wigglesworth’s sizzling May 2013 concert relay with the LPO has in spades – 5/15)?

All of which is another way of saying that Pappano’s Fourth doesn’t quite evince the wholeness of Boult (in 1953), Handley, Haitink or Brabbins (whose enviably lucid, unforced conception seems to grow in stature every time I return to it – Hyperion, 1/20). Nor, ultimately, does it shock to the core like the composer’s and Barbirolli’s incendiary BBC SO accounts from 1937 and 1950. No matter, this undeniably powerful newcomer remains well worth experiencing. Vivid SACD sound and a tastefully judged balance, too. I do hope we can look forward to more Vaughan Williams symphonies from this source.