A warm welcome to this absorbing recital, curated by Roderick Williams to take on tour with pianist Susie Allan to mark the ‘Vaughan Williams 150’ celebrations two years ago. Among the assorted guests that Williams invites to his ‘fantasy birthday party’ in honour of ‘the “grand-daddy” of 20th-century English song’ are five of RVW’s pupils, namely Elizabeth Maconchy, Grace Williams, Madeleine Dring, Ina Boyle and Ruth Gipps – and striking indeed are the songs by the last two in particular (the music of the 18-year-old Gipps evinces remarkable maturity). The birthday boy himself contributes eight numbers, including such favourites as ‘Linden Lea’ and ‘The Call’ from Five Mystical Songs. Also represented are RVW’s distinguished teachers at home (Stanford, Parry and Charles Wood) and abroad (Bruch and Ravel), as well as half a dozen friends and colleagues (Holst, Butterworth, Gurney, Rebecca Clarke, Finzi and Howells).

Poets in attendance include Shakespeare and Whitman (five settings each, programmed as sequences), while Tennyson, George Herbert and Seumas O’Sullivan (1879-1958) chip in with two offerings apiece. Howells’s early (1912) treatment of O’Sullivan’s ‘The Sorrow of Love’ is one of three premiere recordings, along with Roderick Williams’s own teenage setting of William Blake’s ‘The Shepherd’ and the song-cycle A Square and Candle-lighted Boat by Sarah Cattley (b1995), a 2022 commission from the Vaughan Williams Foundation and Music at Paxton and Thaxted Festivals to poems by Frances Cornford (1886-1960, herself a cousin of RVW). The latter proves a touching, quietly intense creation, conceived by Cattley as a ‘creative antithesis’ and ‘companion piece’ to RVW’s Songs of Travel, its ‘probing of emotions from a women’s viewpoint’ combined with a love of home (‘domestic interiors’ and ‘country views’) contrasting with the masculine perspective of Robert Louis Stevenson’s wanderer.

I can confirm that Williams is on splendid form, responding with impeccable technique, burnished tone and perceptive observation throughout: if you need convincing, just sample his mesmerically controlled performance of ‘Menelaus’ from RVW’s Four Last Songs (to words by Ursula Vaughan Williams). What’s more, he enjoys an instinctive rapport with Allan, whose unruffled poise, deft articulation and watchful sensitivity are deeply gratifying.

Top-notch production-values and exemplary presentation – as is customary from this source. In short, a release which will surely provide lasting pleasure.