This discography lists all Boult’s commercial recordings of Vaughan Williams along with broadcasts that are known to exist, preserved in the British Library Sound Archive or in private collections; these are included in order to demonstrate the extent of Boult’s recorded legacy of Vaughan Williams and, in due course, some of them will no doubt be published. Commercial recordings are listed here with the catalogue number of the first UK release (on 78 rpm discs or on LPs) and what is intended to be the most helpful CD reissue. In the case of Boult’s EMI, HMV and Parlophone recordings, these were all gathered together in a 13-CD set by EMI (now Warner Classics) in 2013: Sir Adrian Boult: Vaughan Williams, The Complete EMI Recordings (EMI 903567–2). The Decca recordings of the symphonies (along with the Everest recording of No. 9) were issued in a digitally remastered 5-CD set by Decca in 2002 (473 2412) and, more recently, with Boult’s other Decca Vaughan Williams by Eloquence in 2022 (484 2204). Where relevant, CD numbers refer to these large sets.

For full details of Boult’s Vaughan Williams recordings (including alternative catalogue numbers, matrix numbers for 78 rpm recordings and sources for unpublished material), readers should refer to Philip Stuart’s Adrian Boult, 1889–1983: A Chronological Discography (Sheffield: CRQ Editions, 2016, rev. 2020). At the time of writing, this definitive publication is available as a free download from crqeditions.co.uk. It reveals some anomalies in Boult’s Vaughan Williams discography: though there are surviving broadcasts, he made no commercial recordings of major works such as Sancta civitas and the Five Tudor Portraits. A recording of Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus was planned by EMI in 1975 but never realised; and although Boult conducted the premiere of the Piano Concerto in 1933, his only recording is of the arrangement for two pianos and orchestra.

The extent of these recordings is testimony to Boult’s devotion to Vaughan Williams, with two complete cycles of the symphonies, multiple versions of favourite works such as Job and the Tallis Fantasia, and recordings of pieces that Boult thought neglected, notably Dona nobis pacem and The Pilgrim’s Progress.