This is one of the more significant issues on NMC’s Ancora imprint, as David Blake (70 last year) hardly enjoys a high profile nowadays. As Malcolm MacDonald points out, both pieces can be regarded as “early”, though exhibiting many hallmarks of Blake’s maturity. Lyrical and sensuous qualities dominate In Praise of Krishna (1973): the seven poems chart a course from desire, through longing, to fulfillment – in a song-cycle where the serene and the fervent exist in perfect accord. Alluring as the vocal line is, especially as rendered by Teresa Cahill, it is the translucency of ensemble, solo instruments emerging from and back into the texture with evocative poise, which most readily engages attention – not least in so sensitive a performance as here. More diverse in manner, the Violin Concerto (1976) betrays a debt to Berg in its pivoting between soulful restraint and incisive rhetoric. Yet the confrontation of soloist and orchestra in the first movement’s Allegro feels too contrived to be convincing, as does the insertion of expressive “cameos” in the second movement’s Scherzo on the way to an over-emphatic climax. Influential in its day (Alfred Schnittke spoke admiringly of it), the piece lacks the formal inevitability and stylistic focus of the concertos by Hugh Wood or John McCabe, for all the conviction of dedicatee Iona Brown and finely attuned response under Norman Del Mar. Which is not to say its return to the catalogue is not welcome, or that new recordings of Blake would not be worthwhile.