Symphony No. 1 / Sea Pictures (recorded in 1984)

"[Handley has] a feeling for Elgar phrasing with the freedom and flexibility that can only come from long study and precise understanding. The symphony's essence is the progress of the 'great beautiful tune'...Handley never loses sight of this, letting it (or the kernel of four falling notes) emerge unemphatically but with meaning throughout." (International Record Review)

"...there is no want of lustre in [Baker's] Sea Pictures: she is in rapturous voice, and the "live" dimension adds extra frisson. As for the First Symphony, Handley demonstrates his mastery at revealing myriad details while keeping a firm grasp of the work's expansive architecture, and the LPO is on superlative form." (Financial Times)

"[Baker's] account of Sea Pictures is quite glorious, more rapturously beautiful and intense even than her famous EMI recording with John Barbirolli ...[Handley] projects a fiercely uncompromising view of Elgar [in the Symphony]...making the return of the opening march to crown the finale into a deeply ambiguous triumph." (Guardian)

"Vernon Handley's eloquent account of the First Symphony, restrained yet generously abandoned, is one to treasure. But the plum is Janet Baker's Sea Pictures...Her glorious, rich contralto voice, soaring and floating, is made for this music." (Observer)