On 5 October 1938, in celebration of Sir Henry Wood's golden jubilee as a conductor, Brunskill sang in the first performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams's "Serenade to Music" along with fifteen other leading English singers including another Marchesi pupil, Astra Desmond. In the same year Brunskill sang under Wood in a rare performance of Gustav Mahler's 8th Symphony ("Symphony of a Thousand"). Early in Wood's autumn 1940 season at Queen's Hall, Brunskill sang Brahms's "Alto Rhapsody", ("jolly well", according to Wood).