Vaughan Williams’ 150th has produced a string of new recordings and, with this penultimate volume in Martyn Brabbins’ meticulous and meritorious cycle of the nine symphonies, it looks like Hyperion intends to complete the set this year (fingers crossed).

So far, the merits of Brabbins’ Vaughan Williams have been well-judged pacing (certainly never rushed), attention to musical texture, and superlative engineering offering both depth and detail. There have been highs – a transcendent Pastoral – and lows – poorly cast soloists in A Sea Symphony. This volume counts as one of the highs, with thrusting accounts of the dramatic Sixth Symphony and that underrated charmer, the Eighth.

Brabbins opens the Sixth – RVW’s most endlessly fascinating and magnificently complex creation – as he means to go on, the music erupting with a measured fury, and captured in a recording of enormous sonic breadth. Measured is a word that can be applied to all of this conductor’s readings to date, his interpretations considered, and with an emotional honesty that precludes the occasional surprise. If you want more original versions, try...