This entertaining album was the offspring of a concert given at Carnegie Hall to celebrate the centenary of Lukas Foss (1922-2009). The Buffalo Philharmonic were central to proceedings in recognition of his tenure as music director (1963 70), during which time he had ‘transformed [them] into an adventurous and world-renowned orchestra’; their present incumbent, JoAnn Falletta, was mentored by Foss early in her career.

One of America’s most distinguished musicians (he succeeded Schoenberg as Professor of Music at UCLA), it was only right and proper that Foss’s own music took centre stage. His musical personality was not the most distinctive or demonstrative, perhaps, and yet he was one of the few pupils of Hindemith (he studied with him at Tanglewood and Yale) who did not end up sounding like a clone: the close of the opening Andantino – Un poco allegretto of the engaging First (1944) of his four symphonies is a rare example where the master of Mathis der Maler becomes audible. The symphony’s pastoral opening rather brings Copland to mind, as do the near-contemporaneous Three American Pieces (1944 45, orch 1989) – nicely played here by Nikki Chooi – which have that bright outdoor manner that was a hallmark of Copland’s style in the 1930s and ’40s.

Of similar vintage is the Ode (1944; played here in its 1958 revision), the most serious item on offer and one over which the Second World War, as well as Donne’s inspirational passage ending ‘never send to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee’ hangs heavy. Foss was 22 when these works were written, their ambition matched by his technical acumen. The most accomplished, however, is the later Renaissance Concerto (1985), a delightful suite repurposing (as many of Foss’s later works did) music of other composers, here Byrd, Monteverdi, Rameau and Melvill. Foss described it as ‘a handshake across the centuries’, which tells you, frankly, everything you need to know, although not how beautifully Amy Porter plays it. Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra are pitch-perfect throughout. First-rate sound, too.