Around half of this latest offering from those enterprising folk at Albion Records is given over to incidental music from Vaughan Williams’s two stints – in August 1912 and again the following spring – as composer and conductor at the Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. He had been invited by the company’s actor-manager, Frank Benson (1858-1939), and the repertoire comprised The Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night, Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV Part 2, Henry V and As You Like It.

Material from all but the last two appears in Nathaniel Lew’s enjoyable Stratford Suite. There are six numbers in all: the opening Royal March and fourth-movement Intermezzo derive from Acts 1 and 3 of Richard III, the penultimate Solemn March comes from Richard II, and ‘Greensleeves’ is allotted a movement of its own. The remaining two numbers make use of no fewer than a dozen folk-song arrangements, one hymn tune, two fanfares and part of a march found in the Elizabeth Rogers Virginal Book (compiled in 1656). In the suite that fellow Gramophone critic Malcolm Riley has fashioned from RVW’s contribution to Henry IV, listen out for the eloquent arrangement for muted strings of Dowland’s Pavana lachrymae that accompanies the death of the King at the end of Act 4 (‘Music to my weary spirit’) – and there’s a stirring conclusion that makes use of the plainsong melody ‘Angelus ad virginem’ (‘first as a vocal hymn of thanks and then as a more stately orchestra-only version’). Don’t overlook, either, David Owen Norris’s idiomatic reconstruction of the Overture to Henry V, assembled from an incomplete set of parts housed in the Shakespeare Memorial Library. Twenty years later, RVW substantially overhauled the work for brass band. In both instances the piece opens with the Agincourt Carol tune, but what’s especially intriguing is the possibility that he may at some stage have lent the original full score to Walton (who, of course, went on to compose the music for Laurence Olivier’s iconic adaptation for the big screen).

Also on the disc is a reworking of Vaughan Williams’s later score for Richard II. Entirely unrelated to its predecessor, this grew out of a 1944 commission from the BBC Drama Department for a (sadly abandoned) radio presentation, and for which he produced 28 minutes of music – much of it of superior quality, too (stylistic links with the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies and RVW’s film scores of this period abound). Martin Yates and the RSNO have already given us the 34 cues that were edited and published by Nathaniel Lew (Dutton Epoch, 8/19), and now Lew himself has concocted a most pleasing and highly effective Concert Fantasy lasting some 17 minutes.

Adapted by Muir Mathieson from RVW’s score for the 1955 documentary The England of Elizabeth, the second of his Three Portraits from ‘The England of Elizabeth’ in turn spawned the present Two Shakespeare Sketches, which incorporates two 16th-century songs, namely ‘The wind and the rain’ and ‘It was a lover and his lass’. It’s preceded here by Malcolm Riley’s fetching arrangement for strings and harp of Dirge for Fidele: although published in 1922, RVW’s disarming treatment (originally for two mezzo-sopranos with piano accompaniment) of ‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun’ from Act 4 of Cymbeline was actually conceived as far back as 1895. Five vocal offerings make up the remainder of Albion’s programme: ‘The Willow Song’ (the unpublished manuscript of which is dated February 19, 1897), ‘Orpheus with his lute’ (1903) and the enchanting Three Songs from Shakespeare (1925).

Unfailingly sympathetic performances, one and all, with top-notch production values and exemplary presentation to match. RVW mavens will have a field day here.