On track: Rollicking rendition from a hearty crew

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, like his near-contemporary Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, has always had the misfortune to be overshadowed by the slightly younger Sir Edward Elgar.

It was Elgar who would win international kudos, while Stanford and Parry, ardent Brahmsians working within the London academic circuit, were responsible for the day-to-day liberation of British music from its Victorian doldrums.

Stanford was Irish, which gave his music individuality. But there are, let it be whispered, sections of his Irish Symphony which may sound to our ears as if Brahms smuggled a bottle of double malt into his workroom.

A CD from Canadian baritone Gerald Finley and the BBC National Chorus and Orchestra of Wales under Richard Hickox reveals Sir Charles in nautical mode, with three works that once enjoyed tremendous popularity.

The choristers have the setting of Tennyson's The Revenge to themselves, a vast armada saga, a rollicking tale given out verse by verse, character by character. There are rousing marches and more nods to Brahms, plus a mock minuet for the Spanish sailors. Hickox inspires a hale and hearty rendition.

Gerald Finley is fast proving himself an indispensable baritone, his last disc being an excellent Charles Ives set, A Song For Anything (Hyperion CDA 67516).

On this Stanford CD, he has the two Newbolt cycles, Songs of the Fleet and Songs of the Sea.

That a singer can wax hearty and poetic within the space of a few phrases is extraordinary, and Stanford's imaginative orchestrations give both the Chandos engineering team and Hickox with his Welsh players scope for brilliance.

But I'm not so sure these songs are quite as "saturated with the salt-sea atmosphere", as one of Stanford's acolytes once put it, or "free from the indoor romanticism of young men and maidens, so often planked into musical form".

If Homeward bound were to be sung in German translation, it would be up there with the very best of Brahms or even Richard Strauss.

Finley is just the man to make that apparent.

* Stanford, Orchestral Songs (Chandos CHSA 5043, through Ode Records)