There have been some fine recordings of the Britten Suites in recent years, and Paul Watkins’ is certainly among them. A beautiful, expressive tone is one big asset; another is the way he establishes the basic character of all the genre pieces: his Ciaccona at the end of the Second Suite really sounds like a Chaconne, the two marches (First and Third Suites) have a firm tread, and the Serenata (First Suite) and Barcarolle (Third Suite) both establish an entirely persuasive mood and rhythmic style.

The recording ambience is spacious, sympathetic and resonant – together with Watkins’ polished manner this allows the suites to sound unusually friendly and comfortable. In the Third, for instance, Jean-Guihen Queyras, with his uncommonly well-focused playing and clear sound, sharply characterises the frag-mentary motifs in the ‘Recitativo’ to create a more scary impression, and, in the Passacaglia, his tonal clarity gives to the low double stops a disturbingly profound, dark resonance.

Pieter Wispelwey’s brilliant, focused accounts are more expansive than Watkins’ (seven minutes longer) and more histrionic, with a free approach to the rhythm that occasionally detracts from Britten’s subtleties. Robert Cohen, most like Watkins in his approach, doesn’t always sound as beautiful, but there are moments of high eloquence, above all in the concluding Russian ‘Hymn for the Departed’.

So Paul Watkins is perhaps a little too easy-going to be my first choice – I’d prefer Queyras, on account of the searching quality of his interpretations – but he has a lot to recommend him: lovely playing throughout, and his own entirely valid view of the music.