BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra reviews

When Schumann’s Etudes symphoniques appeared in print, in 1837, they bore a dedication to his English composer friend William Sterndale Bennett.

The torch carried for Tippett by the late Colin Davis and Richard Hickox seems to have passed to Martyn Brabbins. These readings have the intentness of conviction, which the still underrated Symphony No. 1 in particular richly deserves. Completed in 1945 and combining the springy counterpoint of Tippett’s early style with – in its grinding passacaglia slow movement – something of the darkness of the war he had just come though, this sounds like a celebration of a hard-earned maturity.