If the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was such a practiced conductor with almost half a century's experience on the podium leading everything from his own music to the St. Matthew's Passion, how come he made almost no commercial recordings? According to his widow, the reason was simply that, though he lived into the stereo age, no record company ever asked him to. Here, for example, is a disc featuring live recordings of the composer leading his Fifth Symphony and Dona Nobis Pacem, the former receiving its ...
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If the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was such a practiced conductor with almost half a century's experience on the podium leading everything from his own music to the St. Matthew's Passion, how come he made almost no commercial recordings? According to his widow, the reason was simply that, though he lived into the stereo age, no record company ever asked him to. Here, for example, is a disc featuring live recordings of the composer leading his Fifth Symphony and Dona Nobis Pacem, the former receiving its first CD release and the latter its first authorized release ever. They are, beyond all argument, two of the very greatest performances of these very great masterpieces ever recorded. Of course, it must be acknowledged that Vaughan Williams was not an especially skillful conductor. Entrances sometimes go awry and tempos occasionally get waylaid. But these infelicities are a small price to pay for having the composer himself conducting. In the 1952 Fifth with the London Philharmonic,...
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