Frederic Austin:
Spring

Sir Granville Bantock:
The Witch of Atlas

William Alwyn:
Blackdown

Henry Balfour Gardiner:
A Berkshire Idyll

Ivor Gurney:
A Gloucestershire Rhapsody

Ralph Vaughan Williams:
The Solent

Alongside their British Isles Overtures series, the BBC NOW and the conductor Rumon Gamba launch a project to bring often neglected symphonic poems by British composers to wider attention and fame. This first volume presents some of the most individual, yet rarely heard, British tone poems written in the early twentieth century, by composers ranging from the long-established Ralph Vaughan Williams and William Alwyn to Balfour Gardiner and Granville Bantock, giants in their time. Works include Bantock’s atmospheric The Witch of Atlas, based on a poem by Shelley, Frederic Austin’s symphonic rhapsody Spring, Gardiner’s evocation of summer A Berkshire Idyll, recorded here for the first time, and Gurney’s mysterious A Gloucestershire Rhapsody, never performed before 2010.