Ralph E. Lapp, Roads to Discovery

As he proved with his recording of A London Symphony – Record of the Year, Gramophone Awards 2001 – Richard Hickox was a Vaughan Williams specialist. This reissue of an original 1995 recording features such lesser known works from the composer as Household Music and Flos Campi. Alternating between the passionate and the tortured, between long-breathed lyricism and moments of obvious pain, Flos Campi has never really found itself in the mainstream concert repertoire, maybe because of its title, misleadingly suggesting jolly music. Household Music has equally suffered from its title, rather an off-hand one for pieces that at their best show the composer’s brilliance as an arranger. Riders to the Sea, however, is a masterpiece, seen as the finest as well as the most concentrated of Vaughan Williams’s works for the stage, conjuring up multiple layers of emotional response to the natural world, a losing battle with the sea, and the God which rules it, for the islanders in the North Atlantic.

Discover the gems of the 15th Century Incan empire, a domain which covered much of South America. The splendid cities of Curzo and Chairana and the grandeur of Machu Picchu captivated the imagination and, unfortunately, greed of the Spanish conquistadors. Lifelike virtual construction gives us a close look at the massive sacred grounds of the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco, religious and political capital of a world known to generations of European adventurers as El Dorado.