Here’s another enterprising haul from Albion Records devoted to rare gems from Vaughan Williams’s output, none more fascinating than the world premiere recording of ‘The Solent’, one of Three Impressions for orchestra on this CD inspired by locations in and around the New Forest in Hampshire that the budding composer penned between 1902 and 1907. It’s an extraordinarily assured and evocative 11-minute canvas containing a singularly haunting main idea for principal clarinet which RVW subsequently salvaged for use in both the first movement of A Sea Symphony (to the words ‘And on its limitless, heaving breast’) and, towards the end of his life, the second movement of the Ninth Symphony. Neither ‘Burley Heath’ nor ‘Harnham Down’ rise to anywhere near the same level, though both contain much to warm the cockles as well as many a tantalising glimpse of the fully characteristic masterpieces which were shortly to come.

There’s another debut recording in the shape of RVW’s incidental music for a 1951 BBC radio adaptation of Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, and we also get the attractive Prelude on an Old Carol Tune completed the following year and based on material from the same source. Elsewhere, tenor Andrew Kennedy brings a wholly disarming eloquence and infectious fervour to the Four Hymns of 1912 14 (glorious settings of texts by, among others, Dr Isaac Watts and the 17th-century metaphysical poet Richard Crashaw). Finally, baritone Roland Wood lends splendidly lusty advocacy to those three indelible songs (‘The Vagabond’, ‘The Roadside Fire’ and ‘Bright is the ring of words’) comprising Book 1 of the Songs of Travel in the composer’s orchestration from 1905.

A tremendously rewarding and consistently absorbing compendium, this, flawlessly performed under Paul Daniel’s idiomatic direction, and beautifully engineered to boot. A mandatory acquisition for all RVW acolytes.