Nostalgia, alienation, soulful confession and cool cerebral logic: that’s the cross section of American music presented here, most of it from the 1940s when composers were finding a post war footing in various aspects of the past, ending with Gershwin’s pre war ‘Summertime’, written for an opera that reminds us that the living is never truly easy. What a smart programme! Only the lack of consistently good playing from the Orchestra of the Swan keeps this from having a hearty recommendation.

The main attractions are Barber’s Capricorn Concerto and Copland’s Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson. The former looks back to the instrumentation of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 2 but in the manner of neo-classical Stravinsky in one of Barber’s most piquant but least characteristic works. It seems to be shaping up into something memorable when the orchestra hit the hyper-rhythmic final movement and give it a nervous approximation.

In the Dickinson poems, some composers amplify their states of being; Copland makes them internal monologues or one-way conversations so vivid that you’re surprised his operas weren’t far better than they were. Though soprano April Fredrick is a bit aloof to the cosy, James Agee portrayal of Victorian America in Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (perhaps taking her cue from the piece’s dedicatee, Eleanor Steber, who reported the emotions rather than living them), not the slightest distance can be felt between her and the Dickinson texts, especially with Curtis so alert to the details of the orchestral commentary that comes with them. But even in the best instrumental moments of this disc – such as the poetic treatment of the Quiet City incidental solos – the orchestra’s string section sounds thin and intonation lapses are frequent. Maybe this orchestra isn’t quite ready to record.