01. - 03. Symphony No.4, op.53 [27'01]
04. - 06. Piano Concerto in G major, op.85* [27'15]
07. Soliloquy for Cello and Orchestra, op.57^ [12'21]
Malcolm Binns- piano*; Raphael Sommer- cello^; London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley
BBC Radio Classics 1565691932 (recorded 24 February 1976; this CD release 1997
(CD-rip; flacs, booklet, cover and inlay scans)
Recording venue: BBC Maida Vale Studio 1, London
Recording engineer: not given; Producer: Robert Simpson
Given the recent interest in Edmund Rubbra's music on the chat-box, I thought it worth posting this rather rare and fine concert recording. The BBC Genome gives the first broadcast date for the concert as 26 September 1976 (the first in a series of concerts for the composer's 75th birthday celebrations) and was rebroadcast on 3 January 1982. The eminent musicologist and composer Robert Simpson was producer. BBC Radio Classics (issued on the BBC's behalf by Carlton Classics) was a short-lived series that preceded the better known BBC Legends, but this very fine concert was never reissued in the later series.
Until Piers Lane's new recording appears as no.81 in Hyperion's Romantic Piano Concerto series, this and Denis Matthews' 1965 recording with Malcolm Sargent are the only recordings of the Rubbra Piano Concerto. It is difficult to imagine a finer or more eloquent performance than Binns and Handley give here - but no doubt the sound recording will be superior.
The composer himself conducted the premiere of his fourth of eleven symphonies at a Promenade Concert in wartime London (wearing his Army uniform on the podium as required by regulations). A recording of that performance has been issued by Somm Records but I think Vernon Handley is a more persuasive conductor. Handley was a great supporter and interpreter of Rubbra's music and it is surprising that he made only one commercial recording of a Rubbra symphony- the second, for Lyrita (with a wonderful booklet essay by the conductor). He also made a recording of the Soliloquy for Lyrita with Rohan de Saram - rather superior to the performance by Raphael Sommer here.
For me, Handley's is a noble and well-judged performance of the fourth symphony, the best that I have heard. It is only slightly let down by being recorded in concert with no opportunity to patch some occasional ragged playing by the London Symphony.
I must apologise for the poor quality of the scans. I borrowed this disc to rip many years ago and did not have time to digitise the booklet and inlay before having to return the disc. I have cobbled the scans together from various internet sources.
Download from MEGA.
Appendix
I have also added an PDF upload of Gramophone's British music specialist Andrew Achenbach's well-reasoned survey of Rubbra's music and recordings from the June 2001 issue (even though he doesn't mention Handley's Symphony No.4 and is rather more enthusiastic about Richard Hickox's recordings of the symphonies than me). Not a lot has changed in the 19 years since then with the orchestral repertoire on disc other than the aforementioned Somm issue (Rubbra's 1942 performance of Symphony No.4 coupled with Adrian Boult's 1954 performance of Symphony No.2) and recordings of the Viola Concerto with Lawrence Power (Hyperion) and the Violin Concerto with Krysia Osostowicz (Naxos) being issued.
Download Rubbra survey from MEGA.