This offers a powerful, invigorating performance of a symphony which itself has those characteristics in perhaps a greater degree than can be found anywhere else in Vaughan Williams. The performance (and the music) will certainly survive two moments of distinct raggedness, even though one of them is on the very first downbeat; though it is a pity that other takes of these two isolated moments were either not available or not used. The very real other qualities of the playing are shown to good advantage by what is now a very good recording indeed, with substantial impact. It is though, generously spaced; there are today other good recordings of this symphony which manage to give it complete on one side.
The extra space available here on two sides is given to the Vaughan Williams first Norfolk Rhapsody based, agreeably enough, on innocent East Anglian folk-tunes in a style at the very opposite pole from the symphony in Vaughan Williams's output. A good choice of fill-up, but one could wish for more than a six-second silence after a 32-minute symphony before the next music intrudes. I had always thought this folly to be a modern one, but I have been wrong: TH was complaining about it in 1968!
The sleeve interestingly reproduces an extract from the composer's letter to Boult confirming the very last flute note in the symphony's second movement to be E natural, a great improvement on the F originally printed.'