They’re both electrifying, and they sound absolutely magnificent...Pappano makes sure [the Fourth] sings as often as it can...This is a terrible beauty, energetic, Satanic, utterly spellbinding, keeping enough in reserve to make the biggest climaxes truly shattering...The opening bars of this Sixth, a cry of anguish that’s also passionate bel canto song, promise the very best recording of the work.

There is so much musicality and great playing here that I cannot resist offering a strong recommendation.

Even without that added emotional ratchet of the impending lockdown, Pappano’s accounts would surely have been utterly gripping. From the first grinding dissonances of the Fourth it’s clear that he understands these works on a profound level...One thing he captures particularly magnificently here – the equal even of Handley, who I’ve long considered the benchmark for Vaughan Williams’s symphonies – is the muted numbness of the quieter moments.

Pappano’s dramatic, thrustful accounts, vividly recorded, have a momentous, dynamic allure that bodes well for his future tenure, and the orchestra plays this music... to the manner born.

In its restless energy, and in the shading of its reflective interludes, this performance [of No. 4] is alive with risk, the sound clean and detailed.