One of the most heartening aspects of the revival in the wind band is the depth of recent repertoire. And younger composers, as much as their senior colleagues, are active in this respect as can be heard in the first two items on this scintillating new disc from the Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra. Adam Gorb’s Awayday (1996) is a near-perfect concert opener, brash and sparkling after the manner of Leonard Bernstein. By contrast, Kenneth Hesketh’s Diaghilev Dances (2002) is a coruscating tribute to the great impresario and his musical legacy. After a glowingly impressionistic Introduction, its succession of Entr’actes and Dances weaves an enchanting spell, the allusions to Daphnis and The Firebird brilliantly orchestrated as befits a pupil of Dutilleux. It quite overshadows Arnold’s Water Music, commissioned by the National Trust for the reopening of the Stratford Canal in 1964.

The “most imposing landscapes of the American South West” provided the inspiration for John McCabe’s Canyons (1990-91). In this colourful and evocative suite (its four movements play without a break) McCabe responded to these “grandiose” vistas “bursting with an inner energy” in like kind. The variegated tones of the desert spring to life in this highly integrated music, from the stasis of the slow third span – suggestive of the busy desert night – to the vivid Scherzo and teeming finale. Energy of a different sort is present in A John Gay Suite by the much underrated Buxton Orr. Here Liliburlero, Over the hills and far away and a host of other tunes tumble over each other in gay abandon in Orr’s disarmingly subtle score. Decked out in expert orchestration, played to perfection and recorded in typically sumptuous sound, it provides an ideal conclusion to a splendid disc.