Par VAUGHAN WILLIAMS RALPH. Of all his early chamber works, the 'Nocturne' is most clearly by the mature Vaughan Williams, almost anticipating the influence of Ravel which followed his lessons from the French composer in 1908. In the veiled beauty of its highly chromatic harmonies we hear already the tone-poet of the slow movement of 'A London Symphony', while in the fleet-footed 'Scherzo' there i…

This piece the second written for the Schubert Ensemble is constructed from a sequence of episodes which gradually expose a central monody. As the title suggests the music has a nocturnal character. It is constructed in a single movement and is dedicated to the memory of Luciano Berio with whom Butler studied in the 1980s.

2nd Movement-Transcription of the slow movement of Rachmaninov's First Piano Concerto op 1. Programme note by Murray McLachlan: Rachmaninov's first concerto in F sharp minor op 1 was composed in 1891 and dedicated to Alexander Siloti. The work was substantially revised in 1917 with textures made much lighter. The revised version is also more concentrated and disciplined with the material elimi…