Grace Williams’ lifelong interest in vocal writing no doubt owed something to her upbringing in Wales. She studied with Ralph Vaughan Williams and Egon Wellesz, and spent a significant part of her life combining composition with a career in music education. The album Grace Williams Songs, featuring a programme of all world premiere recordings, can be found on 8.571384. The two premiere recordings heard here, To Death from 1953, and the folk song Mari Lwyd from the 1920s, are further evidence of a body of work her biographer, Malcolm Boyd, credited as being ‘of the highest quality and originality’.