This disc marks the centenary of George Butterworth’s death on the Somme in 1916; his all-too-brief flowering as a composer in the the years immediately before the War produced works which have won an established place in the repertoire, but one of his significant works, the Suite for String Quartet, has been little performed and this is its première British recording. Ivor Gurney was another promising young composer who was a victim of the First World War; he survived, but with his health destroyed, and spent his last years in a mental institution. Both Gurney and Butterworth wrote settings of A.E. Housman’s poems A Shropshire Lad, and this disc includes Gurney’s cycle Ludlow and Teme as well as songsfrom Butterworth’s cycle Bredon Hill . Alongside these are other songs by both composers and by Peter Warlock, picking up the themes of A Shropshire Lad – love, loss and war. Many of Gurney’s compositions were lost or neglected, and are only now being brought to light; the hauntingly beautiful Adagio from his String Quartet in D minor – a world première recording – demonstrates what we have lost.