Slowly but surely, Henze’s operas are finding their way on to disc. Gaps remain in the catalogue: the early one-acters, Das verratene Meer, and Venus and Adonis (L’Upupa, premièred just last year, is still too recent), while The Prince of Homburg is available only on DVD. Even if Elegy for Young Lovers and the Cascavelle recording of Boulevard Solitude have not held their place on the shelves, it seems extraordinary that The Bassarids has only recently achieved a second recording.

Composed in 1979-80 for the children of Montepulciano in Tuscany, where Henze ran his renowned music festival, Pollicino (‘Tom Thumb’) is arguably his most approachable opera, with a well-known story, a simplified – although far from simple – musical style and great charm. It would make an enterprising, and musically more satisfying, alternative to Noye’s Fludde (there are also opportunities for dressing up in the delightful forest scene). The instrumental demands are not excessive – except in the area of percussion – and requires only a handful of adults for certain roles.

The opera’s 12 scenes play continuously, punctuated by five interludes. In Henze’s version (to a libretto by Giuseppe da Leva), Pollicino and his six siblings are twice left to fend for themselves in a wintry forest by their impoverished parents. Both times Pollicino realises what is happening: but where first he marks out the path home with pebbles, the second time he is forced to use breadcrumbs which the birds eat, stranding the children. The animals give advice and a wolf takes them to the only other habitation in the forest – unfortunately, the home of a man-eating ogre who plans to cook the children for a feast of the local Ogres’ Union! Happily, Pollicino engineers their escape through the help of the ogre’s own children, who are led by Clotilde, and at the opera’s conclusion they reach an adult-less Land of Spring.

Wergo’s superbly realised first recording has the considerable advantage of employing local Berlin schoolchildren as the majority of players and singers, as Henze specified. Only Pollicino’s parents, the Ogre, his wife and the wolf are sung by adults, and joining the grown-ups are the instrumental soloists, the choral trainers and conductor Jobst Liebrecht. True, none of the young singers may be an Aled Jones, but their account is enchanting and a tribute to local music education. There are notes by Liebrecht and Henze, but it is a shame the booklet does not include a clear synopsis.