Vaughan Williams's evocative and haunting settings of six poems from A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad, entitled On Wenlock Edge (after the first song), date from 1909, the year of A Sea Symphony, and were scored for tenor (originally Gervase Elwes, who made a pioneering recording of them quite soon after the first performance), piano and optional string quartet. Some years later he re-wrote the accompaniment for largish orchestra, for a concert promoted by the Royal Philharmonic Society in 1924. Those who are used to the original version may feel that it has a directness that is to some extent lost in the orchestral arrangement but, as TH said in his review of the LP, the latter has certain very real advantages, such as the vivid impression of gusting wind in ''On Wenlock Edge'', the mysterious distant horns in ''Is my team ploughing?'' and the multifarious bells chiming in ''Bredon Hill''.
The Songs of Travel, settings of nine poems by R. L. Stevenson, date from 1904, and are not quite of the same order of inspiration. Perhaps it was this fact that determined the publishers to issue three of them only (Nos. 1, 8 and 3) for baritone and piano in 1905 and four more (Nos. 2, 4, 5 and 6) in 1907. The complete cycle was not issued (in the right sequence) until 1960, when the seventh song, ''Whither must I wander'', previously published separately, was included for the first time, as was the ninth, ''I have trod the upward and downward slope'', an epilogue which rounds the cycle off with references to three of the other songs and is perhaps the loveliest of them all, since it was only discovered after the composer's death in 1958. Vaughan Williams orchestrated Nos. 1, 3 and 8 in 1905; the remainder were orchestrated by Roy Douglas in 1961-2, using the same orchestral resources as the composer and with such skill that one would be hard put to say, without knowing beforehand, who orchestrated each song.
Both sets are sung superbly, with a deep appreciation of the words as well as the music and with exemplary clarity of diction, by Robert Tear and Thomas Allen, respectively; and Simon Rattle, magnificently supported by the CBSO and by EMI's fine recording, secures performances that are deeply committed and thoroughly idiomatic.'