Continuining the series of Vaughan Williams’s symphonies played by top American orchestras, here is the great English composer’s 2nd Symphony (‘London’) in a vibrant 1989 broadcast by the Cleveland Orchestra. Leonard Slatkin was to record this work in London two years later with the Philharmonia Orchestra, though the ‘Gramophone’ review of that commercial recording expressed reservations about his performance. One wonders what the critic would have written had Slatkin recorded the work with the superb Cleveland Orchestra instead!
4 movements:
[1] 00:20
[2] 13:25
[3] 25:20
[4] 31:50
Other splendid American performances of RVW’s symphonies here on You Tube include the ‘Pastoral’ Symphony (No. 3) with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra; and No. 8 with Charles Munch and his Bostonians.