Damien Falkowski and the Britannia Chamber Orchestra make their recording debut in what has become very much a standard programme of English music for strings. The orchestra is certainly very accomplished and is shown off to good advantage in quite a big, bold and well-detailed recording made at St John's, Smith Square. Falkowski shows that he is very much his own man as a conductor. The Holst work is played in an unusually emphatic manner, which in the end gives it more stature than it sometimes achieves in performance (the composer himself recorded this work with rather similar regard to rhythm and accents, but used faster tempos). The Elgar Serenade has a Larghetto which seems a little slow, and becomes still slower briefly, but there's plenty of expression and personality throughout the performance, and again it makes a good effect.
Warlock's Capriol Suite is played with much vigour and strength, and in Elgar's Introduction and Allegro the work's ebb and flow is beautifully caught in an attractively spacious and flexible performance. Warlock's Serenade, where the composer rather borrows something of Delius's style in his act of homage, is a difficult piece to bring off, but Falkowski conducts watchfully and sensitively while maintaining a steady but flexible pulse. On this evidence I'd like to hear him conduct some genuine Delius.'