The Façade entertainment – poems by Edith Sitwell to music by the then­unknown William Walton – was an amorphous creation‚ a collection of over 40 poems and settings built up over the years between 1922 and 1928. It is the first great merit of this excellent new version that not only has the conductor gathered together all the surviving settings‚ but has also in his illuminating note sorted out that creative process‚ dating and commenting on each item. How fascinating to find that ‘Popular Song’‚ the best­known of all Façade items‚ was one of the last two to be composed. It was in 1942 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first private performance of the original numbers‚ that Façade was revived in harness with Pierrot Lunaire. Constant Lambert‚ who was reciting‚ wittily suggested choosing 21 numbers‚ seven times three instead of Schoenberg’s thrice times seven‚ and that is how it was published. Then in 1977 Walton picked out eight more numbers for Façade Revived‚ but quickly changed his mind‚ replacing three of them for Façade 2‚ which still didn’t quite work on its own. Pamela Hunter in her disc on the Koch Discovery label did a marvellous job collecting all the surviving settings‚ adding recitations of the poems for which the music had been lost. The difference here is that‚ instead of being recited on the disc‚ the texts of those extra poems are printed in the booklet‚ with revealing comments. Also‚ David Lloyd­Jones has devised an order for the 34 items (including the opening fanfare) which is arguably the best yet‚ avoiding the anticlimactic effect of Façade 2 being separated‚ which is what you get on the Chandos Walton Edition disc with Susana Walton and Richard Baker. On the new disc Eleanor Bron and Richard Stilgoe make an excellent pair of reciters‚ and the recording in a natural acoustic balances them well – not too close‚ where so often there is a discrepancy between voices and instruments. They inflect the words more than Edith Sitwell and early interpreters did‚ but still keep a stylised manner‚ meticulously obeying the rhythms specified in the score. Not everyone will like the way Stilgoe adopts accents – Mummerset for ‘Mariner Man’ and ‘Country Dance’‚ Scots for ‘Scotch Rhapsody’‚ and something like southern­state American for the jazz rhythms of ‘Old Sir Faulk’ – but he is the most fluent Façade reciter I have ever heard‚ with phenomenally clear articulation‚ starting with a virtuoso display in the opening poem‚ ‘Hornpipe’. Eleanor Bron‚ less chesty than I expected‚ is also meticulous over rhythm‚ in slower poems adopting a trance­like manner‚ which is effective and in­style. Under David Lloyd­Jones the brilliant sextet of players from the Nash Ensemble‚ including John Wallace on trumpet and Richard Hosford on clarinet‚ could not be more idiomatic‚ with rhythms delectably pointed. It is good that Lloyd­Jones makes so many revealing musical points in his commentaries‚ reflecting his work not just as conductor‚ but as editor of the new critical edition of the score from OUP. The Chandos version under Hickox has warmer sound‚ with the composer’s widow vibrantly characterful as one of the reciters‚ while Koch’s Pamela Hunter as a solitary reciter may lose on variety‚ but is crisply consistent and idiomatic on a disc less expensive than any other. The three items drawn from Constant Lambert’s incidental music for Oscar Wilde’s Salome were written for the first staging in English in 1931‚ using four of the Façade instruments – clarinet‚ trumpet‚ cello and percussion. Long­buried in the BBC Music Library‚ Lambert’s score was discovered by Giles Easterbrook‚ who confected this suite of two atmospheric scene­setting fragments‚ followed by Salome’s Dance and sudden demise – a rather less lurid portrayal than Strauss’s notorious rendering. Altogether a pleasing extra.