The catalogue is not short of anthologies of flute music and transcriptions but there is always room for another good one, although I do wonder why a recital of British music should be called ''Summer Music'' after the title of the Richard Rodney Bennett piece. The disc begins disappointingly, though, for the treatment of ''La Calinda'' from Delius's Koanga is too brisk and inflexible for the music's lazy southern charm, and while the eighteenth-century composer John Ranish wrote tidily enough, I discern no individuality in his Sonata in B minor. The Bennett piece is more interesting, written in an elegantly tonal, laid-back vein though I'm puzzled by Peter Lamb's booklet-note finding the composer's teachers, Berkeley and Boulez, equally relevant to the piece: Berkeley by all means, but I can't believe Boulez would be other than dismissive about such an idiom, which comes close to Miles Davis cool jazz in the second movement, ''Siesta''.
Lamb himself has written the Sonata (1988) that follows, and says that he intended to contribute something melodious and mainstream with ''no attempt to shock'' to the repertory of music for flute and piano, which he does well. While those expecting an avant-garde idiom could be disappointed, others who dread it will be relieved that some younger composers feel no need to reflect Darmstadtian doctrines and dogmas. Elgar, Thomas Dunhill, Cyril Scott and Malcolm Arnold provide the rest of the programme which is agreeable rather than exciting, recorded with little sense of ambience and a heavyish piano. The Arnold Sonata makes for pleasing listening, but on the Hyperion CD Judith Pearce and Ian Brown take a somewhat more pointed and sensually attractive view of the music. '