Ralph Vaughan Williams专辑介绍：“Best has a fine sense of VW as a dramatic composer, bringing tremendous urgency to Dona Nobis Pacem and real passion to the Five Mystical Songs. Best's Serenade to Music is the original, not least in matching the star quality of the singers, but also in its magical atmosphere. He equally evokes VW's sensuous side, not only in Flos Campi but also in the Magnificat with its ecstatic writing for female voices.” Issued to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Vaughan Williams’s death, this collection is tantalizing: it starts with one of the best-selling discs in the the catalogue, the Serenade to Music, and includes such favourites as the Five Mystical Songs and The Hundreth Psalm. There are also two intriguing pairings: in Dona nobis pacem, RVW warns of the impending doom of WWII, in A song of thanksgiving we hear his moving response to its successful conclusion; in The shepherds of the delectable mountains we hear an early working of Bunyan’s literary masterpiece, later extensively reworked in the landmark 1942 BBC radio production of The Pilgrim’s Progress featuring Sir John Gielgud and reprised here, this time in condensed form. Throughout the collection, RVW’s mastery in setting great texts to music is evident, and has prompted the sort of glowing reviews that make this box-set a must have.