REVIEWS: Vaughan Williams: London Soloists Ensemble (Naxos 8.573191) Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote chamber music throughout his long and creative life.

This album, presented by the London Soloists Ensemble, includes the Piano Quintet in C minor, which uses the same rich instrumentation as Schubert’s Trout Quintet, while the Quintet in D major has playfulness of its own.

The Six Studies introduce elaborations on the themes of the English folk song. Highly recommended.

Weinberg: Symphony No. 18 and Trumpet Concerto (Naxos 8.573190) Mieczysław Weinberg’s 18th Symphony is the centrepiece of his symphonic trilogy On the Threshold of War, which focusses on the traumas of the Soviet Union in the Second World War.

Using texts by important Soviet poets, the work reflects on war with an expressive power. A powerful performance by the St Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra is coupled with the Trumpet Concerto.

The Lighthouse: Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (Naxos, 8.660354) On a routine tour of duty in December 1900, the supply ship Hesperus discovered the Flannan Isles lighthouse in the Outer Hebrides to be empty, where the three keepers had apparently disappeared into thin air.

Peter Maxwell Davies’ haunting chamber opera shows what might have become of the three men, marooned in their storm-bound tower.