I write this review on the exact centenary of the Battle of the Somme, which is being appropriately (and heart-rendingly) commemorated, and in which this composer died, at 31. I’m surprised how deeply affected I am hearing this exquisite CD. 

The very mention of Butterworth’s name induces a pang in many people. He was the archetypally gallant yet reticent Edwardian hero, a fine Etonian scholar and musician (and revered by the men he led into battle) and this marvellous music rekindles the pain at the loss of someone cruelly extinguished on the cusp of probable greatness. All the orchestral pieces (some arranged and developed by the conductor) are radiantly preformed and perfectly convey the haunting, dappled beauty of Edwardian summers – great houses, croquet lawns and languid figures in muslin and linen, but not without a hint of mystery. 

The texts of the song cycle A Shropshire Lad were composed by AE Housman and these renditions by James Rutherford are in the same league as those of Sir Thomas Allen. The singing is hearty, direct, innocently patriotic and occasionally suffused with an almost Mahlerian melancholy. The CD contains a premiere recording of the previously unfinished Orchestral Fantasia developed from a 92-bar fragment by the conductor and the Suite for String Quartette (the composer’s spelling) orchestrated by him. The sound is gorgeous. Listen and weep.

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