Serenaded

Not sure why but until today I thought that Ralph Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music was one of his somewhat lightweight early works, knitting together a few good tunes a la the lovely Norfolk Rhapsodies, but not of any deeper consequence. Finally listened to it in a break at work today and discovered how fabulously wrong I'd been. Composed in the late 1930s this is mature mystical VW, as exquisite as anything from Job or the 5th Symphony. Just wonderful.

And the accompanying visuals from the Victorian artist John Atkinson Grimshaw, of whom I'd never heard before, in the version I chanced upon on YouTube, further helped soothe whatever parts of my soul the music failed to reach. Not that there were many.