This does not turn out quite as may have been expected. One notes the title, “Sea Fever”, and the singer, Roderick Williams, and mentally fills in the rest – songs by Quilter, Peel and probably Keel, Vaughan Williams and more by Ireland, all with piano accompaniment. But not so. Instead of the pianist’s gentle touch evoking “the lonely sea and the sky”, the first sound is of an orchestral crash like breakers at Tossa del Mar and instrumental progressions jagged as a bread-knife. This is the introduction to Bax’s rarely heard “Song of the Dagger”, text from a volume of Romanian folk poetry called The Bard of Dimbovitza. The music is strong and turbulent, the poem an aesthete’s delight, full of mad, scarlet things about hot blood, burning tears and foaming wine-cups. I fancy it’s all a bit bogus. The co-translator, “Carmen Silva”, was really the Queen of Romania. And I’m not at all sure about the real nature of that unruly dagger.

“Sea Fever” does indeed have its promised place in the programme, but for the most part the compilers have come up with a selection of items unlikely to be familiar among listeners. The five songs of George Dyson are good, purposeful settings; I like particularly the second, “Morning and Evening”, to verses by Isaac Watts. Rutland Boughton’s Kipling songs have been reconstructed from surviving orchestral parts and piano scores in manuscript. The passage from Parry’s unfinished opera Guenever is another reconstruction, this time by Jeremy Dibble: it strikes me as good music by a man who has taken his eye off the stage. By comparison, Edgar Bainton’s songs do suggest the soul of an opera composer.

Roderick Williams is, as ever, admirable in the quality of his tone, the clarity of his diction and the cleanness of his style. The well arranged orchestral accompaniments are sympathetically conducted and carefully played. Recording is clear and well balanced.