The programme itself is a familiar parade of favourites — Dukas's Sorcerer's Apprentice, Debussy's Clair de lune, Chabrier's Marche joyeuse, Ravel's Une barque sur l'océan, Saint-Saëns's Danse macabre and selections from Bizet's Carmen Suites — and the playing is, as one would expect from this hand-picked ensemble, exquisite.

Having spent the tail end of 2024 revisiting classic 80s works on tour with The Skids, 2025 & 2026 are the years of Janus for Spear of Destiny.

Founded under the auspices of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society, the label has built a catalogue that consistently rescues, restores and reilluminates corners of the RVW repertoire that the bigger labels have long overlooked. Rise, Heart is another exemplary addition to that enterprise and one of the most rewarding Vaughan Williams discs of recent memory. The premise is characteristically thoughtful: every track here is a first recording of the work in the version presented. At its centre stands the Five Mystical Songs, those luminous settings of George Herbert first heard in 1911, given in Vaughan Williams's own arrangement for voice, piano and string quintet, made around 1925 and seldom performed.