Given the conspicuous success of John Wilson’s world premiere recording of the imposing Heroic Elegy and Triumphal Epilogue (6/10), it was only natural that the folks at Dutton should turn their attention to further offerings from Vaughan Williams’s formative years. Dating from 1898, the Serenade in A minor was the composer’s very first orchestral work and initially cast in four movements, the third of which (‘Intermezzo and Trio’) was subsequently replaced by a ‘Romance’ of haunting poetry and no little emotional scope, its slumbering passion surfacing with a vengeance in a positively Puccinian climax (listen out for some unexpectedly verismo string-writing at 7'18"). Julian Rushton’s new edition deftly accommodates all five surviving movements and reveals a work of personable warmth, uncommon assurance and fresh-faced charm, a description that extends to the Bucolic Suite of 1900-01, where RVW’s scoring undoubtedly acquires an extra guile and luminosity (those cannily blended brass sonorities from 1'40" in the finale are especially striking). First heard at the 2010 Proms, Dark Pastoral comprises David Matthews’s treasurably idiomatic completion of RVW’s sketches for the slow movement of a projected Cello Concerto (the recipient was to have been the great Pablo Casals). The Fifth Symphony dates from the same period (1942-43) so it’s not surprising there are echoes of that masterpiece (and its sublime ‘Romanza’ in particular). Guy Johnston makes an impeccable soloist. That merely leaves the colourful and breezy five-movement suite for orchestra that Roy Douglas compiled from Folk Songs of the Four Seasons, a large-scale choral work originally fashioned in 1949 for the National Federation of Women’s Institutes. Yates presides over enthusiastic, spick-and-span performances. The sound is vivid, if a touch raw, and Lewis Foreman’s notes are engaging.