RODERICK Williams, currently at the very top of baritone recitalists in Britain, gave his first professional performance of Schubert’s Winterreise on Monday evening in the beautifully preserved Gilbertine priory church of Old Malton.

It speaks of his high regard for the marvels, not to say difficulties, of this song-cycle that he has waited until his early fifties to attempt it. This was no ordinary journey.

It also marked the unveiling of a new English translation by Jeremy Sams. Williams would not have been able to achieve what he did without the encouragement and assistance of Christopher Glynn’s piano. They were the complete duo, and the outcome was memorable.

Sams’s translation – more of a paraphrase – gets right under the skin of the weary, jilted traveller, in language that borders on conversational, it is so modern. But it works. Williams warned in advance that he would – contrary to his wont – use a copy and not look into our eyes. It mattered not; the gain in immediacy of the English text was more than compensation.

Glynn’s preludes and postludes were exemplary scene-setters and Williams latched on to them hungrily. Together they explored the young man’s volatile moods. It was riveting; a memorable experience.

Sir James MacMillan was in the audience on Tuesday afternoon to hear the premiere of his Four Little Tributes, homage to four fellow composers – Michael [Berkeley], Max [Peter Maxwell Davies], Sally [Beamish) and John [Casken]. The first three were piano quintets, the last a piano quartet, with members of the Royal Northern Sinfonia, led by violinist Bradley Creswick, and pianist Charles Owen.

This is an engaging score, largely gentle, always friendly and sympathetic. There was a climactic swell in the elegiac Michael, some frisky decorations in an otherwise steady Max, and lively dialogue and a repeating second violin motif in Sally. The ruminative John, with rippling piano, dissolved winningly into solo violin shades of Vaughan Williams.

Tom Hancox was the vivid flautist in Mozart’s K.285 Flute Quartet and Mahler’s teenage venture into the piano quartet proved its lush debt to Schumann. Macmillan’s witty Cumnock Fair, conjuring Scottish jigs, reels and ditties, was brilliantly syncopated by both composer and players, a double bass now among them.