• In Tenebrae’s A Walk With Ivor Gurney (Signum Classics, two CDs), director Nigel Short, Aurora Orchestra, mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly and narrator Simon Callow weave a moving and affectionate programme around the artistic landscape of the Cotswolds-born poet-composer. The starting point is Gloucester Cathedral and the Three Choirs festival, where Gurney and his friend, fellow composer Herbert Howells, first heard and found inspiration in Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.
Gurney’s In Flanders (“I’m homesick for my hills again… Cotswold or Malvern, sun or rain”), wistfully sung by Connolly, and Vaughan Williams’s An Oxford Elegy (settings of Matthew Arnold) powerfully evoke time and place. The disc’s title is from an extended piece for soloist and choir by Judith Bingham, commissioned by Tenebrae in 2013 and superbly sung by this top vocal ensemble. This is an album full of riches.
• English music from the same period is the focus of Septura’s latest Naxos disc: arrangements (by Simon Cox and Matthew Knight) for brass ensemble of Elgar, Finzi, Parry and Walton. The lineup of three trumpets, three trombones and tuba is unexpectedly expressive in Elgar’s Serenade in E minor (originally for strings). If you like English pastoral music, and the sound of brass, this album is irresistible.
• Hubert Parry, another Gloucestershire composer, is being re-evaluated after years of neglect (Jerusalem and Blest Pair of Sirens aside). The BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Rumon Gamba have just released his Symphony No 4 (Chandos). Today’s Radio 3 Sunday Feature, A Portrait of Parry, explores the composer’s influence on younger composers, including Vaughan Williams. Tonight, 6.45pm, then on iPlayer Radio.
