The sound, engineered by Ralph Couzens, is magnificent...While fully relishing the at times dreamy polyphony of Vaughan Williams’s textures, Wilson’s Fantasia has sharp, impassioned edges too, and a telling poignancy in leader John Mills’s solos.

[Vaughan Williams] The delights and shivers one feels from his Sinfonia of London have more to do with perfect articulation and gleaming satin than with unbuttoned emotion. The music speaks to the Anglican heart in profound ways, while John Wilson goes from strength to strength.

I expect it has been said before, but the Sinfonia of London belongs in the Formula 1 class of orchestras, and in this repertoire sits in pole position.

Yet again I must express my amazement at the quality and beauty of the string sound that Wilson achieves with his orchestra. The initial chord of the Vaughan Williams shimmers in a way that few other recordings can match, giving way to the sumptuously rich sound of divided violas and cellos and later to restlessly surging violins.

You might not associate red-hot passion, sonic opulence and sensual thrills with English music, but the super-conductor John Wilson and the molten-lava strings of the Sinfonia of London bring them all to these loved works, sweeping away the tired old clichés as they go. Their Elgar is electrifying.

As ever, the brilliance of the playing makes this essential listening, the precision and attention to detail alive and exhilarating. The entire disc holds the attention, but the last movement of the Elgar, urgent and impassioned, has you on the edge of you seat: a tour de force.

John Wilson is one of the most exciting conductors around, and as usual he is here fully supported by his excellent Sinfonia of London… These are quite simply magnificent renditions of familiar masterpieces.