This welcome reissue is of two of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s most rewarding orchestral compositions, which complement each other very well. Sinfonia from 1962 is economical and enigmatic, though less abrasive than many of the composer’s other early works, while Sinfonia Concertante (1982) is much more expansive in his later Scottish-symphonic manner.

Sinfonia reflects Maxwell Davies’s interest in Monteverdi’s Vespers, and even if the ways in which his material derives from Monteverdi are not immediately evident, the contrapuntal intensity and glowing sonorities that work so well in St Mark’s Venice find modern, personal equivalents in this score. The composer has commented on his relative lack of confidence as an orchestrator in his early years, but the ways in which the intertwinings of wind and strings generate luminous expressive continuity show the hand of a thoroughly mature composer: and there is a focus and a terseness here, as well as a sense of the lyrical engaging with dramatic, which wears better than the more diffuse and convoluted processes of some of the later works.

Sinfonia Concertante is scored for a woodwind quartet, horn, timpani and strings. In effect it is Sir Peter’s Symphony No 2a, since it comes between his large-scale Second and Third Symphonies (1980 and 1984 respectively), and shares material and methods with them. It was written for the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields in 1982, but this recording from 1986 came early in the composer’s long association with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and just before he began his series of 10 Strathclyde Concertos for the orchestra’s principal players. The performance steers a confident path through the music’s often turbulent waters, the solo horn leading the elaborate concertante parts with startling bravura. It is good that Sir Peter’s authoritative recordings of his works are beginning to reappear, and this disc provides an excellent foundation for anyone approaching the larger scale symphonies and concertos for the first time.