THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

The White Gates,
Dorking,

16th July, 1948.

Dear Benjamin

I shall of course be proud to be the dedicatee of your Symphony and I should like to hear the records very much.¹  The only trouble is that we have an old-fashioned gramophone and it does not take anything but the commercial wax records.  If yours are of the very thin kind they might not do on our machine.  At all events we should have to have special needles (“trailer” I think), so it might be better if I heard them one day when I was in London.²
Otherwise I am free all next week after next except July 29th.
R. Vaughan Williams

(R. Vaughan Williams).

Arthur Benjamin, Esq.,
3, Gloucester Gate Mews,
London, N.W.1.

1. Barbirolli conducted the first performance of Benjamin’s Symphony at the Cheltenham Festival in 1948. On VW’s impressions of the work as heard on the wireless see VWL2774.
2. Recordings taken from broadcasts were made on acetate disks on which normal commercial steel needles could not be used.