Very enjoyable. The teenage tunes in the Simple Symphony and the extraordinary range of invention in the Variations, written ten years later (Britten was 24), show how easily ideas came to him in those days, and they were such original, animated ideas too. These works are played with great skill by a band that sound as though they were enjoying themselves. The CD cannot much increase the clarity of the fugue at the end of the variations but this in truth is to a large extent eye music, the composer unable to resist showing (at least on paper) how clever he could be. Recommended.'