As in previous instalments in Collins Classics’s exemplary Britten edition, Steuart Bedford brings a keen perception and rare intelligence to every item in this attractive, chronologically wide-spanning programme, and he draws some beautifully polished playing from his ever-responsive Tyneside band. Only the Simple Symphony will raise any eyebrows, I think. Bedford’s is a distinctive conception, more athletically trim than playful in the “Frolicsome Finale”, a touch stern, perhaps, in the “Boisterous Bourree”, and poised rather than especially affectionate in the “Sentimental Sarabande”. Some will understandably prefer more in the way of easy charm and communicative warmth, but elsewhere Bedford’s wonderfully clear-sighted direction makes for riveting results, not least in the Suite on English Folk Tunes, given here with a bracing acuity and affecting restraint that come close to the ideal.
As heard in Colin Matthews’s wonderfully idiomatic accompaniment for string orchestra, the sparky Temporal Variations of 1936 (originally scored for oboe and piano) now seem but a mere step away from the astounding achievement of the Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge completed the following summer. Nicholas Daniel is an immaculate, characterful soloist, and those adjectives equally apply to violist Philip Dukes’s contribution in Lachrymae – yet another eloquent and luminously textured realization, not as anguished or elegiac as, say, the outstanding Tomter/Brown Norwegian CO version, but utterly compelling none the less in its fastidious sensitivity and unremitting concentration. Throw in Catherine Wyn-Rogers’s vividly sympathetic rendering of A Charm of Lullabies in (again) Colin Matthews’s orchestral guise (and, like the Temporal Variations, another world premiere recording), and it all adds up to a very strong recommendation. The clean, beautifully balanced recording emanates from All Saints’ Church in Gosforth, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.'