William Walton’s First Symphony is a fierce, large-scale masterpiece from the mid-1930s, a particularly anguished time for the composer. It gave him much trouble and was premiered unfinished. The first recording of all four movements, with its resolution hard-won, was made in 1935 by the London Symphony Orchestra, which also made its finest recording on LP (conducted by Andre Previn) 32 years later. Now comes an LSO in-concert version that has close to a full measure of extrovert anger–the fast second movement is marked “with malice”–and inward melancholy. With the unsurpassed Previn (RCA) and excellent Andrew Litton (Decca) accounts available only in multidisc collections, the Davis version is now the most stirring stereo performance on one CD, despite the dry acoustic, flattened soundstage and absence of fillers.
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