Ashley Wass’s classy Bax survey for Naxos has now reached the piano miniatures – though that term hardly does justice to the disc’s opener: the magnificent ballad What the Minstrel Told Us dates from 1919, its mood of slumbering tragedy mirroring Bax’s anguish over the events of the Dublin Easter Rising (in which he lost a number of close friends), and Wass’s epic conception suggests as never before that the strife-torn First Symphony (and its baleful central Lento solenne in particular) was already gestating in the composer’s mind.

As on previous volumes (10/04, 6/05), Wass allows the music ample time to breathe and he brings an immaculate touch, refinement and unflinching concentration to everything he does. In fact, on a first hearing I did wonder whether Wass’s exquisite artistry was almost too much of a good thing; just occasionally I pined for the more homespun approach of, say, Iris Loveridge on her pioneering (and long deleted) mono series for Lyrita. Still, that would be to reckon without the ravishing poetic instinct Wass lavishes upon A Mountain Mood, The Maiden with the Daffodil and The Princess’s Rose Garden (all written in 1915 for the 18-year-old Harriet Cohen) or the very real sense of joyful discovery he imparts to Mediterranean (which goes with a deliciously sophisticated swagger here), Paean and Gopak.

Gopak’s headily beautiful companion piece, May Night in the Ukraine, is a haunting evocation indeed, and much the same can be said of A Hill Tune (Bax in his sweetest Irish vein), Lullaby and Sleepy Head (which brings proceedings to an infinitely touching close).

All told, then, another genuine treat in what has been an unmissable series. The sound (masterminded by producer/engineer Michael Ponder at Potton Hall in Suffolk) is vividly real, if a trifle close (the ear does adjust, though). Perhaps Wass and Naxos might now be persuaded to turn their attentions to Bax’s two concertante masterworks, the Symphonic Variations and Winter Legends.