Charles Wilfred Orr, born in 1893, has been described as ‘the unsung hero of English song’. He began his academic life at Cheltenham College, where he considered the school’s attitude to music ‘completely philistine’, although he sang in the school choir. Later he studied harmony and counterpoint with EA Dicks, a local organist and a musical conservative, but this only had the effect of making Orr admire his contemporaries – Wagner, Elgar and Strauss – the more, although his own style is nothing like theirs. Hearing the music of Delius in 1915 had a profound effect on him, and Delius praised three of his songs (now lost) and acted as his mentor. But his later enrolment at the Guildhall School of Music had nothing like the influence of his meeting Philip Heseltine (better known as Peter Warlock), who helped him establish his career and get his music published, notably the lovely ‘Silent Noon’. This had already been set by Vaughan Williams but Orr’s setting is just as haunting and beautiful.

The variety of Orr’s settings is remarkable, although many of them have an underlying air of melancholy or nostalgia. Two thirds are settings of AE Housman and the majority of these are from A Shropshire Lad. So both volumes open and close with songs from this source, which certainly match Butterworth’s better-known settings. In Vol 1, the flowing first song, ‘Along the field’, with its striking piano accompaniment, describes a man retracing a walk he made a year earlier with a different lover who has since died. The many striking numbers include ‘Farewell to barn and stack and tree’, a song about fratricide, although by no means melodramatic, and the lyrical ‘Hughley Steeple’, which laments the death of departed friends who lie in the shadow of the tower.

In complete contrast, the last of the first group is the lustily rustic ‘When smoke stood up from Ludlow’, which is all but a folksong, with a satisfying ending. Other memorable items on the first disc are ‘Tryste Noel’, a languorously folksy carol, and ‘The Carpenter’s Son’, which is very dramatic indeed. It immediately evokes the hangman and has an arresting piano prelude. By contrast, ‘Fain would I change that note’, ‘Slumber Song’, with its delightful rocking accompaniment, and the closing Housman setting, ‘Loveliest of trees’, are all melodically delightful.

The five songs from A Shropshire Lad which open Vol 2 are all among Orr’s most magnetic settings, opening with one of his finest, ‘With rue my heart is laden’, and ‘Oh, when I was in love with you’, indebted to Vaughan Williams. The famous ‘Is my team ploughing’ was set by both Butterworth and VW and, once again, Orr’s version is every bit as fine.

‘On your midnight pallet lying’ is an eloquent lover’s plea to his beloved for a final night together before he must depart (to the war), with a gentle piano cadence to close. ‘Plucking the Rushes’ is a translation from Chinese but you would never guess that from the piano accompaniment or the lyric. Of the Four Songs (1959) which follow, I was particularly taken with Orr’s setting of Helen Waddell’s ‘Requiem’, omitting most of the religious references but creating an affectingly sombre atmosphere. Later in the recital, after the passionate ‘Since thou, O fondest and truest’ of Robert Bridges, Waddell’s ‘Hymn Before Sleep’ is a darkly soporific slumber song with a moving close. Then, her ‘While summer on is sleeping’ is a simple love song based, surprisingly, on the same medieval manuscript which was the textual source of Orff’s Carmina Burana. We return then to Housman and the jolly ‘The lads in their hundreds’, and the hint of tragedy in ‘The Isle of Portland’, which housed a particularly unpleasant prison with penal labour. ‘1887’ was the year of Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee and the song agreeably celebrates her reign alongside memories of fallen comrades from Britain’s military ventures in a skipping 6/8 rhythm.

The closing song (from A Shropshire Lad) is a song of seduction, which provides a suitable closing line for the recital as the pretty girl, whom the poet is seeking to seduce, sends him packing with the words ‘goodbye young man, goodbye’.

Mark Stone, the excellent baritone who has planned and sings this comprehensive recital so impressively, is obviously thoroughly at home in this repertoire and I wish I had more space to describe Orr’s fascinatingly diverse accompaniments, which Simon Lepper plays so imaginatively. I recommend these two discs strongly to all lovers of English song and even more to singers, for they will surely find items here suitable for expanding their own repertoire.