'Arcadia Lost' presents a feast for lovers of English music, featuring three Ralph Vaughan Williams masterpieces and one of Benjamin Britten’s in performances given by, mostly, Australian musicians. Renowned British conductor Mark Wigglesworth directs the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in three of the works, all recorded live at Sydney Opera House.

The glistening solo violin of Michael Dauth, concert master of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, captures the lark’s swirling flight in Vaughan Williams’ hugely popular The Lark Ascending. In the composer’s much less well-known Flos Campi (“flower of the field”), the Sydney Symphony Orchestra's principal viola Roger Benedict gives glorious voice to this most passionate music for viola, chorus and orchestra. The Song of Solomon, one of the greatest love poems in all literature, is at the heart of this evocative piece.

In On Wenlock Edge, tenor Steve Davislim brings the greatest tenderness and drama to the six settings of A E Houseman’s A Shropshire Lad poems, which in Michael Kennedy’s description in the booklet notes “tell of unrequited or unfaithful love and of soldiers marching away to die in foreign fields”. The brilliant young Hamer Quartet and pianist Benjamin Martin vividly underscore the tumultuous emotions of the work.