Robin Milford (1903-59) is a name new to me, and a delightful discovery. As Lewis Foreman remarks in his booklet-notes, Milford’s (choral) music did not survive the ‘stellar outburst’ of Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. Yet in its own, quiet, gentle way, everything instrumental he wrote haunts the memory just as readily as a more spectacular piece. As the opening Fishing by Moonlight (a pastel-shaded siciliano for piano and strings) so winningly shows, the melodic lines twist gently in unexpected ways, and there are similar unostentatious harmonic shifts. The Miniature Concerto which follows has a delicate, bouncy opening movement. The Adagio is unassuming but touching, and the folksy finale is irresistibly jaunty.

The expressive Elegy for James Scott, with its (thoroughly absorbed) Vaughan Williams influences, and a memorable solo violin interlude, is a little gem; so is the Elegiac Meditation for viola and orchestra which, with its bitter-sweet melodic line, could be worthy of Elgar. In a way, Milford is a Jean Françaix-styled miniaturist, though not in the least French. This is music more in the manner of the Holst St Paul’s Suite and Warlock’s Capriol Suite, only slightly more insouciant.

Milford writes delightfully for the flute (here the nimble Julian Sperry), and his pair of folk song arrangements (‘John Peel’ and ‘Drink to me only’) are most personable, while the Interlude for Flute and Strings explores a personal vein of nostalgia. But my favourite work here is Go, little book, which opens with a brief and engagingly sung quotation from a Robert Louis Stevenson poem, then offers seven concertante flute vignettes of remarkable variety: ‘The Wit’, unexpectedly, is a winsome Andante, followed by a lovely, simple portrait of ‘The Living River’, with ‘The Nightingale’ providing the chirping conclusion.

This is music for an English summer evening, with a glass of wine to hand – rewarding in its unpretentious, melodious, nicely crafted way; especially when played with sympathy and elegance by Robert Salter and the excellent Guildhall Strings and so naturally balanced and recorded by Andrew Keener. Don’t miss it.