The variational multiscale (VMS) approach based on a high-order discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method is used to perform LES of the sub-critical flow past a circular cylinder at Reynolds 3 900, 20 000 and 140 000. The effect of the numerical flux function on the quality of the LES solutions is also studied in the context of very coarse discretizations of the TGV configuration at Re = 20 000. The potential of using p-adaption in combination with DG-VMS is illustrated for the cylinder flow at Re = 140 000 by considering a non-uniform distribution of the polynomial degree based on a recently developed error estimation strategy. The results from these tests demonstrate the robustness of the DG-VMS approach with increasing Reynolds number on a highly curved geometrical configuration