With their by now customary enterprise where British music is concerned, Virgin Classics have reached the music of Edmund Rubbra, a composer who has a loyal following but whose works have never counted for much with the wider public. Not that the wider public have been given much chance to become acquainted with them. The BBC's commendable recent series of broadcasts of the 11 symphonies may well have won Rubbra new admirers, but only one, the Tenth, is currently available on CD. So perhaps Virgin will fill the gap with at any rate some of the remaining ten. The Third, Fifth and Sixth certainly deserve to be in the catalogue.
On the whole I tend to think that Rubbra the symphonist may go down better than Rubbra the song-writer as represented on this disc. The earliest cycle included is the Four Medieval Latin Lyrics of 1932 for baritone and string orchestra, sung here by David Wilson-Johnson in that very English plummy baritone style, with excessive vibrato, that one either admires or loathes. The recording of the voice is rather close, which tends to exaggerate the defects, but the songs themselves are at least varied, ranging from the folky to the lyrical. Hans-Hubert Schonzeler, who conducts also provides the accompanying notes.
The other two cycles, one with full string accompaniment, the other with string quartet (the excellent Endellion), are for tenor and are beautifully performed by Martyn Hill. However, this listener found ten settings of Spenser sonnets most of them slow and insufficiently contrasted too much of a good thing. There are some fine moments, but the general effect is monotonously grey. The Sinfonietta for strings was Rubbra's last orchestral work and is, in my view, worth all the rest of the music on this disc. Its elegiac undertones cannot be mistaken and are rather moving. Good performance and recording.'