Few great American orchestras have recorded the Vaughan Williams’s symphonies but luckily there are a number of ‘live’ performances taken off the radio. Here is a 1988 broadcast of No. 5 by the wonderful Chicago Symphony under Leonard Slatkin. His complete set of Vaughan Williams’s symphonies was recorded in England, like all the other RVW cycles at the time, rather than in America. This performance suggests that a complete cycle of all nine RVW symphonies recorded by one of the great US orchestras would be of considerable interest to lovers of British music.
1st mvt.: 00:15
2nd mvt.: 11:50
3rd mvt,: 17:28
4th mvt.: 30:50