A seemingly miscellaneous collection, yet all but one of the pieces have a link: they share the circumstance of having been written originally for a particular occasion. Very varied occasions, it may be—Three Choirs Festivals, a folk-dance festival, the 1924 Wembley Exhibition, a film, a radio serial. And thus very varied music, stressing (probably unintentionally) the adaptability of the composer.
The most sizeable single work is the Five Mystical Songs of George Herbert: moving music which yet becomes exciting enough when this is needed. Stephen Roberts is perhaps not the ideal soloist here: there are some poetic moments (the end of ''Love bade me welcome'', for example), but too often elsewhere the voice is overtaken by an insidious vibrato. Not so with the Sinfonia Chorus, who offer excellent support; so too of course do the orchestra, who indeed play splendidly throughout the programme. They accompany (principally) for one other of the pieces: The Lark Ascending—the very essence of one of the most idiomatic of VW's earlier styles—where Bradley Creswick captures the essence of the ruminative solo violin part very well indeed.
Among the shorter pieces the Two Hymn-Tune Preludes and the Prelude on an Old Carol Tune share something of a chorale-prelude style, put into very good effect, while not all that distant from the style is the excerpt from the 49th Parallel music. Different altogether from these relatively solemn pieces are the two exceedingly lively ones which are based on folk-songs and dances: the Sea Songs march (here played in its later version, splendidly adapted for orchestra) and The Running Set.
In these, again, Richard Hickox persuades the orchestra into the liveliest and most stylish of performances, shown at their best by a very good quality of recorded sound. Many will find a great deal to enjoy here.'