In 1938, Vaughan Williams wrote a piece called Double Trio, but shelved it for nearly a decade. After the war, he picked the score of the work back up and decided its music would be better-suited to a larger instrumentation. He fashioned the piece for two string orchestras of disproportionate size, neither featuring second violins. The mood is light throughout and Vaughan Williams avoids using the two string bodies for contrast, choosing instead to alternate their roles, with one playing in the foreground and one in the background. The Partita is comprised of four movements with the first, a Prelude, marked Andante tranquillo. It is a pleasant, thoroughly enjoyable creation whose thematic charm and subtle scoring reveal this multifaceted composer's more genial side while setting the general tone of the work. The second movement is a Scherzo, or as Vaughan Williams calls it here, Scherzo Ostinato. Marked Presto, it is a catchy piece whose menacing elements are really good-natured and colorful, having much the spirit of the Scherzo in the composer's largely serene Symphony No. 5 (completed in 1943). The third movement is an Intermezzo, marked Andante con moto and carrying the subtitle "Homage to Henry Hall." Hall (1898-1989) was a prominent British band conductor who for years led the BBC Dance Orchestra. The Intermezzo's main theme is haunting and somewhat nocturnal, and even though it nearly turns funereal, its music remains light and subtly colorful. The finale, "Fantasia," is marked Allegro and is lively and brilliant in its scoring with rhythmic aspects that are imaginatively developed. The Partita lasts around 20 minutes in a typical performance and should have wide appeal, especially to fanciers of music for string ensembles.

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