n the notes which accompany this issue, the late Paula Fan, who accompanies these songs by Parry, makes the point that the composer’s reputation would appear to rest on a small group of works from what was a prodigious output…

Lucy Walker is a young composer specialising in choral music and her work has been commended by no less an authority than Bob Chilcot…

The works which give this issue its title give an indication of just how popular the operas were in the mid-nineteenth century…

The story of Ailsa Dixon is, sadly, not an unusual one. A composer of great promise, who happened to be a woman, had to be content with a scant number of performances during her most fertile period of composition…

There is (of course) the dreaded acoustic of the Barbican Concert Hall to contend with, but especially in No 5 I felt the engineers had done very well in presenting the music clearly and atmospherically…

A beautifully recorded disc, and an intriguing programme, with some superb playing…