In her song-set for baritone and piano A Swift Radiant Morning, Rhian Samuel, a noted contemporary composer of English song, has created a portrait in words and music of the young poet Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895-1915). Robert Graves described Sorley’s death – at the Battle of Loos – as among the three most significant amongst poets in the First World War (the others being Wilfred Owen and Isaac Rosenberg).

The five songs are ‘Rooks’, ‘The Sounds of War’, ‘The Signpost’, ‘In Memoriam’, and...