The pastoral landscapes of Vaughan Williams’s Songs of Travel are muddy underfoot with the imprints of the many baritones (and the occasional tenor) who have trodden them. Bryn Terfel, Thomas Allen and Christopher Maltman are just the beginning of a long list of travellers, who now count Roland Wood among their number.

Wood is a fine musical story-teller, articulating words and melodies with equal sensitivity and care. He has little inclination to indulge, however, and just occasionally a phrase or cadence will feel self-consciously snatched, so brisk is their dispatch. He shines in the operatic intensity of the climax to ‘Youth and love’ and the forthright, declarative confidence of ‘Bright is the ring of words’, supported throughout by Iain Burnside’s articulate accompaniment.

The Songs of Travel are the only straightforward work on a disc from the recording label of the Vaughan Williams Society that is otherwise filled with wonderful curiosities and oddities – chamber arrangements of songs from The Pilgrim’s Progress and The Lark Ascending by the composer himself, and Constant Lambert’s arrangement for violin and piano of Vaughan Williams’s Violin Concerto.

The musical economy of the latter lends itself particularly well to Lambert’s chamber treatment. The melodic architecture emerges clearly in Matthew Trusler’s vital performance, which retains folk colours and gestures among straighter classical technique. What The Lark Ascending loses in widescreen scope when reduced for violin and piano, it gains in the rougher, earthier colours that emerge – the husky purity of Trusler’s violin against the bell-clarity of Burnside’s piano. Once again, Albion Records has given us a treasure trove of a disc full of fresh insights and sideways glances at familiar repertoire.