Born in Birmingham in 1948, the composer and conductor Robert Hanson held directorial posts at both Dartington College of Arts in Devon and Morley College, London, before going freelance in 2007. The two substantial works on this Cala release both have links with former colleagues at Dartington.

Completed in 1994, Thanksgiving Music for soprano and piano was conceived as a tribute to the then recently deceased Roy Truby, a fine harpsichordist and much-loved teacher at Dartington. Lasting some 40 minutes, it’s a courageously reflective, deeply felt sequence which sets texts by Christina Rossetti, John Fletcher, William Strode and Gerard Manley Hopkins, as well as ‘Heart’s Music’ from Thomas Campian’s First Book of Airs, culminating in an ecstatically songful – and to my mind profoundly moving – postlude for piano alone that serves to remind us (and here I quote from the excellent booklet-notes) that ‘the fact of death should make us value life, rejoice in it, and celebrate the many positive contributions to the common weal of a life well lived’. The piece was written with Sarah Leonard’s flexible and superbly controlled voice in mind, and she forges a memorable alliance with that consummate pianist Jonathan Powell, whose fine-grained tone, subtle palette and deft touch are a joy to hear.

The Violin Sonata is an earlier offering from 1987, the recipient being the remarkable Jack Dobbs (1922-2008), who retired as head of music that same year. A passionate advocate of Malayan and Indian music and the Indonesian gamelan, pioneer in the field of music therapy and much else besides, his notably diverse tastes are gratefully (and humorously) acknowledged in this idiomatically crafted and resourceful three-movement work. Indeed, the ‘Introduction, Passacaglia and Conclusion’ finale is as absorbing as it is serene. Suffice to say, Jane Gordon and Jan Rautio respond with rock-solid assurance and tremendous conviction, and the disc as a whole is certainly worth tracking down.