Readers coming to this disc through Braunfels’s delightful opera Die Vögel will recognise that the composer would be temperamentally suited to writing a set of Symphonic Variations on a French Children’s Song and a suite from his opera The Glass Mountain, inspired by a Christmas fairy-tale. The chirpy theme of the Variations comes from a collection published in 1870 by Widor and is taken at a smart lick by Johannes Wildner and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Braunfels allows the variations that follow to emerge as almost entirely new pieces, each one imbued with an innocence and clarity, winningly expressed.

A guide to the story of the The Glass Mountain by Braunfels himself is given in the CD booklet. The music, inspired by titles like ‘Will-o’-the-wisp’, ‘Lady Sun’, ‘Good Old Moon’ and ‘The Advent Star’ comes from the heart. The suite is given a touching performance, with a number of fine contributions from individual players. In the earlier Variations the trombones form an impressive group, crisply captured by the production team in Maida Vale Studio 1.

The Sinfonia brevis comes between these two lighter works with a title that belies its length and the size of the forces gathered together. Written in 1948, it conveys that age of anxiety about which Auden wrote from the other side of the Atlantic. A call sign on wind (2'59" in) and falling string arpeggios suggest the unsettled mood in the pithy opening, a moderately paced Allegro. The anguished tone continues in the spacious Adagio, where the lyrical passages are turned on their heads by the dramatic episodes; these could sound overwrought in the wrong hands but Wildner seems to have this music in his blood. He brings off the following tricky Scherzo with aplomb. The finale, a passacaglia, brings resolution to the foregoing tensions with the assertion of a major chord at the final climax before the quiet ending, most affectingly played.