• In a Strange Land: Elizabethan Composers in Exile (Harmonia Mundi) is the latest collection, released with unerring timeliness, from Stile Antico, the 12-strong ensemble whose name signals tonal purity, precision and musical intelligence. The theme is spiritual and political disjuncture. Many leading composers in the time of Elizabeth I were forced to uphold their Catholic faith in secrecy or exile, caught between conscience and submission. Together with shorter works such as John Dowland’s Flow, my tears, William Byrd’s Tristitia et anxietas and Richard Dering’s Factum et silentium, Robert White’s majestic, 22-minute Lamentations provides the crowning glory. The album is enriched, in all respects, by a contribution from a modern Elizabethan, Huw Watkins (b1976). His setting of Shakespeare’s strange, allegorical poem The Phoenix and the Turtle – about the destruction of an ideal – is at once fluent and dissonant.
• If this period interests you, listen to Radio 3’s Twenty Minutes podcast in which the Rev Richard Coles explores William Byrd and Catholicism, and how the composer survived as a recusant.
• Reminding us of our identity as an island race, the Stile Antico album cover depicts a sea scene. So too does the penultimate volume in the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s superb Vaughan Williams series, conducted by Andrew Manze (Onyx). Never mind the order, we’ve reached No 1, A Sea Symphony. Soloists Sarah Fox (soprano) and Mark Stone (baritone), with the RLP Choir, join forces for an epic, stormy and beautifully nuanced account of these Walt Whitman settings. From sea to land and air: the symphony is paired with The Lark Ascending in the 1920 version, with violinist James Ehnes the ethereal soloist, floating off into the blue yonder.
