The British Council recording of the Symphony in G minor was reviewed in several newspapers and periodicals, perhaps most notably by Edward Sackville-West in the New Statesman:

Since taking up the position of music critic for the New Statesman in 1935, Sackville-West had established a reputation as a perceptive and discerning writer on music. The Times wrote that his articles: ‘were distinguished not only for their command of the jewelled phrase but [also] for their zealous propagation of young British composers’. However, the young British composers whose cause Sackville-West espoused were generally those – such as Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett – whose musical style he believed looked forward and eschewed what he regarded as dated pastoralism. Whether jewelled phrases such as ‘the symphony flops against the mind like a stingless jellyfish’ were perceptive and discerning is questionable, but they reflected an agenda that went beyond strictly musical matters. Sackville-West's disparaging remarks on Moeran's music were not confined to the review of the recording of the symphony, and the context for them was probably his and Moeran's differing relationships with Benjamin Britten. Sackville-West was infatuated with Britten, while Moeran, having previously been close to the younger composer, was, by 1943, no longer a friend. Nevertheless, the attacks did not seem to disturb Moeran. As he later wrote to Lionel Hill: ‘I have been told that Sackville-West rarely misses an opportunity of having a hit at me.’ The New Statesman review excepted, however, most critics praised the recording of the symphony both for its purpose and for its content.

Regardless of the views of critics, Moeran's foremost musical concern was the completion of the piano rhapsody.