The Solent - Fifty Years of Music by Ralph Vaughan Williams

World premiere recordings and other rarities from England's 20th century master. Album of the Weekend, 7-8 September 2013.

This gem of an album features the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Paul Daniel in a selection of rarely heard works by Ralph Vaughan Williams, some of them receiving their first recording.

There's the world premiere recording of Three Impressions for Orchestra. It features the title piece, The Solent, that gives the album its name. Reminiscent of Vaughan Williams' In the Fen Country and also dating from the early 1900s, it's a delicate, melancholy tone poem.

Songs of Travel Book 1 is performed magnificently by the baritone Roland Wood while Four Hymns for Tenor, Viola Obbligato and Strings give scope to shine to the tenor Andrew Kennedy and the viola player Nicholas Bootiman. The album concludes with another world premiere recording, Vaughan Williams' incidental music for a radio dramatisation of Thomas Hardy's novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge.