This is the third CD of Kenneth Fuchs’s orchestral music arising from the enthusiastic partnership of JoAnn Falletta and the LSO. United Artists on the second CD (3/08) was a tribute to that orchestra and now the viola concerto Divinum Mysterium has been written for the LSO’s lead viola, Paul Silverthorne.

As with Fuchs’s Canticle to the Sun, for LSO horn player Timothy Jones, this concerto is based on a hymn-tune. This time it’s ‘Of the Father’s love begotten’, originally plainsong, and it’s interesting to trace the use of that fine melody, which emerges in full about two-thirds of the way through. The concerto, obviously rewarding to play, has cadenza material but is temperamentally more poetic than display. There’s a similar approach in American Rhapsody for violin and orchestra but the discourse is more meandering, as the title suggests.

Fuchs is not an original figure: he’s affably conventional and undemanding. The opening of Atlantic Riband, celebrating the trans-continental shipping lines, recalls the triads of Vaughan Williams, while Copland has affected the melodic spacing as well as the brass-writing in the overture Discover the Wild. That lasts less than five minutes and there are five pieces on this CD lasting less than 60 minutes. So nothing is over-extended and the performances are hand-in-glove with the composer.