A London Symphony by Vaughan Williams, Chandos

Whereas most indie classical record labels tend to use a period painting from some stock library as album art, Chandos in the 2000s specialised in evocative, luminous composites in blues and reds: over-the-top and a lot of fun. And appropriate for Ralph Vaughan Williams’ London Symphony, an expansive early twentieth century symphony balanced between the pensive and manic. This was the first recording of it in the more numinous original version, and Chandos clearly wanted to make a premium-rate record feel like a compelling package on which attention had been lavished. (A bit beyond what I could afford, in fact – I borrowed it from the library.) Chandos use Abadi a lot, a font which I’ve rarely seen elsewhere; here Trajan and Centaur (the latter partly in italic) complement it for larger text. The Chandos wordmark is in Antique Olive. Cover by Sean Coleman, booklet typeset by Dave Partridge.