The BBC Concert Orchestra, Rupert Marshall-Luck, Roderick Williams, David Owen Norris, Gavin Sutherland - Now Comes Beauty (2016)

Presented here is a collection of works, all commissioned or premièred by the English Music Festival, of different styles, inspirations and influences, but which all demonstrate a tremendous beauty, individuality and vibrancy. Sparkling and celebratory overtures are provided by Matthew Curtis and Richard Blackford, while Paul Carr provides gorgeous lyricism with Now Comes Beauty and Suddenly It’s Evening ; and Philip Lane’s Aubade Joyeuse bubbles with energy. Both Christopher Wright’s Legend and Paul Lewis’s Norfolk Suite evoke a wonderful sense of atmosphereand David Matthews’s White Nights is full of searing beauty. David Owen Norris’s Piano Concerto is typically idiosyncratic and effervescent; while John Pickard’s Binyon song-cycle combines a terser musical language with some moments of meltingly beautiful lyricism. This disc demonstrates that English music as a genre is currently thriving, with a plethora of composers with new and exciting things to say in accessible and attractive musical languages. The English music tradition, and the legacy of which Vaughan Williams spoke – a chain of tradition passed on from Tallis through to Parry and beyond – is still vivaciously alive.