Five down and one to go in this enterprising series, the main item here being the engaging Suite for Strings that Bridge penned in 1909-10. Hickox and his alert band do it proud, imparting all the wistful suppleness and twilit rapture one could wish to the first and third movements respectively. At the same time, these performers quarry every ounce of charm from the Intermezzo, and the finale twinkles as it should. Returning to Nicholas Cleobury’s outstanding performance (now restored on an Artistes et Répertoires twofer from RCA), I was deeply touched again by its freshness of new discovery, though Hickox has the benefit of an even more lustrous (if slightly less agile) body of strings. I could quite happily live with either; better still, acquire both!

Similarly, I find little to choose between Hickox and Cleobury in the two intermezzi from Bridge’s 1921 incidental music for Frank Stayton’s three-act comedy Threads, an effective diptych comprising a wistful Andante and gorgeously Ravelian Tempo di valse. It was David Lloyd-Jones who introduced us to the melodious sway of the prentice Valse Intermezzo (Naxos, 7/02), while the entrancing ‘Christmas Dance’ Sir Roger de Coverley will be familiar to many from Britten’s classic Decca account (which Hickox all but matches in stylish aplomb). Other highlights include those delectably sophisticated reworkings of ‘Salley in our Alley’ and ‘Cherry Ripe’ (published as the Two Old English Songs in 1916) and the picture-postcard ‘Canzonetta’ (the second of the Two Entr’actes, inspired by a Mediterranean holiday in 1926).

There are also three première recordings. Baritone Roderick Williams is a sympathetic exponent of the Two Songs of Robert Bridges of 1905-06 (‘I praise the tender flower’ and ‘Thou didst delight my eyes’ – lovely discoveries, both) and the dashingly colourful broomstick-ride that is The Hag, a setting of Robert Herrick from June 1902 that seems to nod towards Liadov’s Baba-Yaga. Responding to an invitation from Oxford University Press to contribute to A Bach Book for Harriet Cohen, Bridge produced Todessehnsucht, a piano transcription of the funeral chorale Komm, süsser Tod; four years later, in 1936, Bridge made this immaculate and moving arrangement for string orchestra.

Another valuable survey, then, glowingly engineered by Ralph Couzens and expertly annotated by Paul Hindmarsh.