Roderick Williams is one of Britain’s finest exponents of English song, yet one forgets that he is also a composer of note, a versatile musician and no stranger to the art of orchestration. The invitation to record orchestrations made by Williams over the past decade or more, together with a commission from the Hallé Orchestra to orchestrate the first collection of George Butterworth’s settings of Housman’s A Shropshire Lad and songs by Ina Boyle, Ruth Gipps, Rebecca Clarke and Madeleine Dring (all Vaughan Williams pupils), seemed to him an irresistible one, but the project also came as a challenge, as Williams himself recognised: can orchestrations of songs already well known for their colourful and characteristic piano accompaniments be enhanced by the orchestra?

In the case of Vaughan Williams’s early cycle The House of Life, where I at least feel the tension of the composer’s uneasiness with the piano, the presence of the orchestra feels altogether sympathetic. Indeed, the entire cycle comes across much more convincingly in its orchestral garb, and this is true of such a well-known song as ‘Silent Noon’. It is also good to be able to hear an orchestration of Ernest Farrar’s setting of the same text. Farrar’s Three Vagabond Songs of 1908 was intended as a triptych of orchestral songs but the score is now lost. Farrar’s through-composed setting, a sophisticated dichotomy between C major (in which it begins) and the home key of D flat major, has a symphonic dimension in terms of its thematic development. This lends the highly charged sexual symbolism of Rossetti’s sonnet a real intensity, especially in the final, reflective D flat section.

Williams’s sensitivity as a singer also provides him with the necessary insight into orchestrations that allow the meaning of the text to ‘speak’. In the case of the Butterworth Shropshire Lad cycle, one that is already in many ways artistically ‘complete’ in its economy of accompaniment, the orchestrations are beautifully judged in terms of their own frugality. This is particularly true of ‘Loveliest of trees’, ‘Look not in mine eyes’, ‘The lads in their hundreds’ and the ghostly hues of ‘Is my team ploughing?’, where knowledge of Butterworth’s agile piano parts did not hinder my enjoyment. Lance Baker’s orchestrations with Stephen Varcoe (Chandos, 1/90) offer a useful comparison.

Williams’s orchestrations, for the most part, endow a wide range of tints and shades to the songs he has chosen. Ireland’s ‘Great Things’ has a swagger; ‘Sea Fever’ has a haunting nostalgia; and the ‘satisfied grin’ of James Burton’s ‘When I set out for Lyonesse’ is compelling. The disturbing darkness of Rebecca Clarke’s scena-like ‘The Seal Man’ is communicated vividly as a mini-drama, and the solo violin of Ina Boyle’s ‘The Joy of Earth’ encapsulates the soaring of the skylark (perhaps as a nod to Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending). To me perhaps the greatest challenge to realise in orchestral terms is WC Denis Browne’s masterpiece ‘To Gratiana Dancing and Singing’. Certainly, Williams’s orchestration has a beauty, balance and pointillist intuition, but I wonder, particularly in the final verse, whether the sense of heroic physical struggle that embodies the quintessence of Browne’s immensely demanding and dense accompaniment (with its left-hand tenths and cross-hand chords) comes across sufficiently in spite of the exquisiteness of sound. But I am just nitpicking in what is a must-have recording, not only for those who are devoted fans of Williams’s art but also those who are entranced by this wonderful repertoire.