Repertoire: The BEST and WORST Vaughan Williams 5th Symphony 

I remember an American critic complaining that VW's music was "relentlessly lovely". I'm sure he meant it to sting, but if I were a composer, that's the kind of insult I would like to get.

Sibelius got to hear the piece on radio in Scandinavia sometime after the war and loved it. He wrote Vaughan Williams saying he was honoured to accept the dedication.

Magical, ethereal, glorious. The pinnacle of English orchestral music, in my view; the Romanza is the one piece I would play for non-classical folks who are moved by the aching themes in great film & TV scores, because they could not help but fall in love with it. Just listened to the 5th again for RVW's 150th -- best wishes to all on the joyous occasion.

Previn did so much for British music. His work with the LSO (especially on RCA) was remarkably consistent. Simply the best!

I'm a total RVW-head. I own, I believe, every recording of this work, including ones that didn't make the cut here. Some are good (Carlos Kalmar), some are okay (Alexander Gibson), some are lousy (Mark Elder, Roger Norrington). For me the standout is Bryden Thomson. I find it to be the most luminous recording of this most luminous work. Everything is shaped to perfection, & it just glows, glows, glows. I find Thomson's RVW to be underrated in general (I take your point about some of the sonics), but besides the 6th & 7th, I think they're all fairly well in the front rank. Thanks so much for the video. Looking forward to the rest. Consider doing an RVW book!

The Romanza from his 5th symphony was played today at HM the Queen's funeral.

Imagine what it must have been like to hear the London premiere of the 5th in 1943 in the midst of war and blitz. What consolation and what a restorative for a stressed people. As then, now!

One of my very favorite works. I came to it through the Menuhin recording, and glad to see it makes your list (and you're right, the two piano concerto coupling is great as well: fell in love with both pieces). I've heard Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony perform the symphony a couple of times, and their live performance was very good as is the recording (and their live performances of the other pieces on the recording were likewise very good). Thanks for this talk, Dave.

Michael Collins told an interviewer that he re-recorded the Finzi for BIS because his previous (Chandos) recording was with a BBC orchestra, which meant that Classic FM refused to play it. I guess they have a no-BBC policy. So to get those sweet, sweet Finzi radio royalties, Collins did it again, and he tacked on RVW 5 just to prove that he can really conduct.

Hands down, my favorite symphonic work in all of classical music. The first version heard often becomes the standard to which others are compared, and fortunately Previn's with the LSO was my first exposure and remains my top choice. Bakels' and Manze's (whose live Proms performance I preferred even to his excellent recording) are very close second choices. I bought Haitink's box set--sound unheard--because his Debussy orchestral music was so extraordinary I thought he couldn't go wrong with this music. Big letdown! Anyway, thanks for doing this, enlightening and fun as always!

I loved your dismissal of the Haitink disc. Nice comedic timing!

Thanks David, really enjoyed this video as with all your recent Vaughan Williams contributions. My feeling is in the last 40 years or so RVW's music is gradually becoming more main stream & its videos like this, that are making this happen. While I do not always agree with all of your performance assessments 100%, it is obvious you are also a dedicated fan of RVW's music. RVW's Fifth Symphony has a special place in the repertoire and even my local Symphony, the Sydney Symphony, have played this piece twice in the last few years,

Thanks so much for this! The Fifth is one of my favourites ever since I was introduced to it by a friend in my arrogant twenties. Thrilled to hear your opinion about it! This May, Andrew Davis came to Berlin Konzerthaus and conducted it most wunderfully, to an audience (Germany!), that hardly knew the thing, but in the end turned out to be utterly mesmerized. About that Sibelius homage -- I beleive it was the Fourth, coming in with the same C-D-F# sequence in the very beginngin, rather than the Sixth, but I might be wrong there. Again, thanks!

Dave, I have been a big RVW fan since university days. My Masters thesis was a stylistic analysis of his Mass. Three of them are translated over to his orchestral music: his synthesis of folk music, the revival of Tudor and Jacobean musiv, and his study on orchestration with Ravel in 1908, when Ravel was barely on the radar in England. The 5th was the very first CD I purchased, and it was the Handley on EMI Eminence. Since then, I have purchased the Slatkin, the Menuhin, and the Boult (with the 3rd on EMI) . I love them all. I have over 40 CDs covering his whole ouervre, so I definitely a RVW enthusiast. BTW, I bought the Haydn Paris Symphonies by Brueggen, and the London Symphonies with Harnoncourt, and now I have become a Haydn Symphony fan. Thanks for turning me on to them.

The Thomson recording is available to stream and the single CD can often be found on the used market for a sensible price. Great sound, with plenty of body even in the quiet sections. Warmly recommended.

Barbirolli is magical in this especially in the otherworldly slow movement.

This is a wonderful survey, Dave. RVW’s 5th is hard to surpass in the sheer beauty department, and I was unaware of some of these recordings. I truly had no idea Michael Collins conducted, and a pairing with the Finzi Clarinet Concerto is too irresistible to pass up. I may have to hunt down the Previn/Coitus Institute if it can be had for less than a princely sum. HOWEVER, it is difficult to argue with your Previn however. A lot of agreement on the thread. Slatkin is my runner-up of those I’ve heard.

My favorite work and the one that started my classical music journey many years ago.

I have the Bryden Thomson version on a single CD release with the Lark Ascending...it's my favorite among the recordings I've heard so far, but I'm now curious about the Previn - thanks for pointing it out!

Thank you very much for confirming my own opinion. Until now, I have considered Sib 6 and RVV 5 as two stars of a twin constellation.

Ralph Vaughan Williams (RVW) is my favourite composer, bar none; and I have many CD recordings of his works; including all nine symphonies and 'The Pilgrim's Progress' (two versions). The odd thing is that RVW, although born in rural Gloucestershire, was a city man, who loved London (as it used to be!). Yet - as you point out - so much of his finest music has an ethereal quality to it which is very remeniscent of the English pastoral idyll. My introduction to him was in Bury Fields County Primary School, Odiham (Hampshire), because the imaginative Headmistress, Miss Cox, would have us all enter the Hall for morning assembly, with classical music playing. Thus, I encountered the 'Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis' at the tender age of six. Now aged seventy-one, I bless that lady for her introduction to RVW, just after his death.

I love that work. It's the Anti-Fifth: although it has its storms...they aren't right off the bat like in Beethoven or Mahler's Fifth. It's a wartime symphony of sorts...but quite the opposite of Shostakovich's Eighth. Beautiful stuff, and I lament it's not heard live more often.

I have the first 4 recordings at the bottom of your pile, but also of course have the Boult & Previn box sets. When I first got into RVW in the mid 70s their cycles were the way to go and remain so. Incidentally the "RCA engineers" on the Previn are actually Decca engineers as Decce was the UK distributor of RCA at the time.

Many thanks for a very helpful review. I hope it inspires viewers to acquaint themselves with the music of RVW, and with this magnificent work. The RCA Previn awakened my enthusiasm for this composer decades ago. Previn's thrilling account of the finale, tension maintained right to the end, has never been surpassed. I wanted to remind you and your listeners that the Previn and Slatkin VW cycles are both out of print and Amazon sellers are asking high prices for them.

I was discussing this wonderful symphony with none other than Robert Marcellus....the amazing principal Clarinetist of the Cleveland Orchestra....in my student days..... He thought it so wonderful....he mentioned especially the final portion of the last movement....with the (as he put it) the strings playing the Alleluias wafting to heaven over a very very soft E timpani roll......Mysticism for which RVW was known throughout his life.....

I have the Slatkin version - the Romanza tears your heart out.

VW5 was written in 1943, at the height of the war, not after the war!

I like your word...luminosity. Back in 60s last century, a friend lent me his vinyl RVW 5th, Previn with LSO. I didn't know the symphony. I was struck. I couldn't afford a full price vinyl costing £1 & 12 shillings. So for 10 bob, I got a cheapo label Boult conducting it. Well, his ending, those final bars where the strings ascend higher & higher, I haven't heard any other performance do it like that old cheapo. Maybe RVW never intended that. But luminous is the word I've been looking for.

Oh boy, another new composer for me…whom I will clearly greatly enjoy (lol).

Love this piece… it’s funny, we give Strauss so much credit for his ‘autumnal’ post-war works, written near the end of his long life - 4 Last Songs and Metamorphosen - as a memorial to what was lost. Yet we don’t give VW the same credit (he was only 8 years younger than Strauss). I hear the 5th as a love song to the pastoral England many feel was lost after the war.

Completely agree about the British only point. This is great music period. Implore people who haven't heard this and other major RVW works eg the Tudor Portraits, Sancta civitas, Job, Piano Concerto and the symphonies.

An interesting technical point.....if you listen to the timpani part in the pinnacle of the Romanza in the Boult version, the timpani part is a measure later than in most other performances.....and it makes more sense his way.....the 2 times I performed this work, I did it the Boult way.

Oh, RVW 5 -- the piece I literally cannot listen to more than once every few years because I find it just so beautiful and powerful, if that makes sense. Glad you give props to the Bournmouth recording, it's how I discovered the piece. Highly underrated RVW cycle!

Heard Previn's when I was young & first heard RVW...like a first love always a bit hard to find anything better. You're so so right abought the English snobbery.

The beginning of this symphony sounds like waking up after a really good nap. Hard to explain.

For me, it's Boult and Handley in this amazing symphony.

Wow! A virtuoso review. One of my Fave Daves 😇

I have to be honest, personally I've never had a problem with the recording quality on the Handley recording (some of that series I agree were problematic but this one seemed fine). And the performance is just a knock out...the Scherzo fleeting and spectral, the Romanza wonderfully hushed and Flos Campi pretty special as well.

plangent - thanks for expanding my vocabulary

Some of the greatest-sounding RCA albums (or in this instance, Previn's RWV cycle) were recorded by the Decca team. I've often wondered if Kenneth E. Wilkinson wasn't simply the greatest classical music recording engineer EVER…

A good survey of VW 5. I'm fond of both Previn's LSO and RPO recordings. I'm trying to track down the Slatkin set at a reasonable price. One not mentioned is another fine RPO recording with Alexander Gibson - another reliable British music interpreter - which is well worth hunting down.

Hello . Previn recorded his cycle whith LSO between 1967 and 1972. Boult's stereo cycle was recorded between 1966 and 1971. I think it had something to do whith Vaughan Williams's centenary 1972 . Best wishes Fred.

Dave you're not alone in your admiration for the Previn/LSO recording - 1001 Classical Recordings to hear before you die (Simon Whalley) has this one as tops too.

Well, I happen to like both Slatkin and Haitink very much. Sorry to disappoint. ;-) The Romanza (what an incredible, intense masterwork!) is the absolute peak and heart of the piece, in my humble opinion, and both Slatkin and Haitink do justice to her "sad giant" tone.

Fresh, clean and first rate sonics. As exciting as anything, Bakels does it for me. Maybe lacks the atmospheric impact of Previn but makes up in all other aspects.

I don't always agree with you as regards the Haitink recordings of the symphonies, but I certainly do as far as this symphony is concerned. However, I initially thought it would be the one symphony that would suit his temperament and I was really disappointed when I heard it. I also have the Michael Collins and that performance surprised me too. In my opinion, however, I don't think the work reaches the heights of the 4th and 6th symphonies, which in my opinion are both magnificent

Happen to love this piece more than any other in my 2,000 cd collection and ( sorry Dave) rate Haitink and Hickox highly. No matter which version you choose get at least one in your collection, turn off the lights and let this wonderful music wash over you. VW 150th anniversary on 14 October.

Previn's LSO Vaughan Williams 5th on RCA was recorded in 1971 on May 25 & 28 in Kingsway Hall. The engineering, as with almost all of his London based RCA recordings from the 60s & early 70s, was handled by Decca. It's a big reason, IMHO, for the success of most of his early symphonic recordings on RCA.

"..quasi Brucknerian, transfigurative, spiritual hogwallow...." LOL....spot on! (I feel that way about Mahler, too, but don't tell my brass-playing friends!)

Fortunate to work on a BBC documentary called "Music after Mao" 50 years ago. Should have been 'fronted' by Andre Previn, but he had to cry off with an injured arm! He was replaced by Vladimir Askenazy. All filmed in Shanghai. Most moving and strange experience? Vovo Askenazy conducting the Shanghai PO in V Williams' 5th Symphony, under flickering light bulbs. Bizarre, and boy did they struggle!! Cultural Revolution had banned all western EVERYthing, and Ashkenazy basically hated being there! I can never here VW 5 without think of that event.

I continue to most favor the Yehudi Menuhin rendering from I think 1988. The last three minutes of this symphony is probably the most stirring thing I’ve ever heard.

It cracks me up the way you say "Why Fumtphprutp...."

Although I love all of RVW’s symphonies, #5 until recently, was my least favorite. Mainly because it, for the most part, kinda sits there. Even Aaron Copland said that listening to it was like ‘Watching a cow for 45 minutes.”. But after hearing Boult’s EMI recording, I like it a lot more. But #2 is still my absolute favorite.

I stuck to Yehudi Menuhin.