Lyrita have followed their reissue of Edmund Rubbra's Sixth and Eighth Symphonies on which I reported in October, with the Second and Seventh. These are of earlier provenance (Sir Adrian recorded No. 7 some 22 years ago) but such is the excellence of the transfers that few would guess it. Indeed in both detail and body these recordings sound very impressive. Although it is often said that Rubbra's music is not of our time it could not have been written in any other; what I find strongly appealing is his unaffected directness—Rubbra is always very much his own man and totally unconcerned with contemporary trends. Various commentators have spoken of them as ''motets for orchestra'', and as Wilfred Mellers commented when speaking of the early symphonies, the ''orchestration shows scarcely any concern for the possibilities of colour, nothing on which the senses can linger and the nerves relax''. Although he revered Vaughan Williams, there is little of the overtly pastoral in his music; he did not belong to the 'cowpat' school of English composers but he possessed a keen sense of nature's power which you can certainly feel in the haunting opening pages of the Seventh Symphony of 1957, a work which has consistently grown over the years in my estimation.
The Second composed in 1937, when he was in his mid-thirties, is a powerful piece with a very strong slow movement—Harold Truscott has called it ''a profound meditation'' and drawn attention not only to Rubbra's contrapuntal mastery but his Sibelius-like use of dual tempos, fast and slow or slower, running simultaneously. Vernon Handley gives a fine account of the symphony and contributes an excellent sleeve-note too. This reissue is strongly recommended, even to those who already have these recordings on LP. Let us hope that we do not have to wait too long for a recording of the Ninth.'