For all that this album takes its title from – and, as the booklet states unequivocally, ‘centres on’ – Ian Venables’s rather fine new song-cycle, commissioned to mark the 150th anniversary of Vaughan Williams’s birth, it is the wonderful On Wenlock Edge that dominates proceedings. Venables even scored Portraits of a Mind (2022) for the same forces: tenor, piano and string quartet; time will only tell whether he follows VW’s example and produces an orchestral version, too!

Alexandra Coghlan neatly covered modern-day On Wenlock Edge recordings when reviewing the Gramophone Award-shortlisted recording by Mark Padmore (his second – Harmonia Mundi, A/14); I agree with her that Padmore’s earlier recording with the Schubert Ensemble is (marginally) stronger. Bostridge remains the cycle’s finest vocal exponent currently but as he recorded the orchestral version (a much-reissued account conducted by the much-missed Bernard Haitink), comparisons are unfair for Alessandro Fisher, who acquits himself very well indeed. I like his balance of strength and frailty in these Housman settings, mirroring the poems’ subject of the fragility of life. Padmore is a strong rival but choice may depend ultimately on couplings, the Piano Quintet for Padmore, the Venables and Iain Farrington’s idiomatic arrangements of the Four Hymns of 1912‑14 (again for the Wenlock ensemble), with their intimations of Pilgrim’s Progress spirituality, for Fisher.

Venables’s strong song set is a worthy commemoration for the composer I would rank the finest from Britain since the Tudor period, even over Elgar (heretical as that may seem). Venables’s selection of texts is nicely acute, opening with the George Meredith poem that inspired The Lark Ascending and continuing with others by VW’s widow Ursula, RL Stevenson, Christina Rossetti and Whitman. The result is an original and beautifully balanced cycle that, frankly, would grace any recital or recording. It receives a marvellous rendition from Fisher, and the accompaniments by The Navarra Quartet and William Vann (some may find these a touch reverential; I do not) are near ideal. Albion’s sound, engineered by Deborah Spanford and produced by Andrew Walton, is clean if unobtrusive.