Beethoven, Berlioz, Segovia … they’ve all supposedly likened the classical guitar to a small orchestra. For his debut album, guitarist Jack Hancher certainly appears to have taken this to heart. Indeed, of his recording of Britten’s Nocturnal after John Dowland he says: ‘My imagination was let loose learning the piece, to the point where I was actually marking in the score which section of an orchestra I imagined might play a particular phrase or passage.’

Dowland, however, is the presiding spirit over this impressive debut, while legendary guitarist Julian Bream hovers nearby: the recital is bookended by Dowland’s music; Bream was famous for commissioning new works for guitar, of which the Arnold and the Britten are two conspicuous examples. Hancher follows in Bream’s footsteps, having commissioned Laura Snowden’s The Memory Garden, an attractive, nostalgic tribute to her grandmothers, and Dani Howard’s dangerously addictive You Don’t Have To Tell Me Twice, which the composer says ‘features the many tones and colours [Hancher] is able to produce from the instrument’.

The Dowland is immediately compelling, both intimate and, yes, orchestrally conceived: the range of dynamics in Forlorne Hope Fancy is especially HIP-less. Each movement of Arnold’s Fantasy for Guitar is exceptionally well characterised while referencing the preceding Dowland Fantasia, with a similarly flexible approach to phrasing in both ariettas.

But the highlight by far is Hancher’s richly realised take on the Britten, and one has to go back to Sean Shibe’s masterly reading on his similarly impressive (and similarly programmed) solo debut album ‘Dreams & Fancies’ (Delphian, 9/17) to find anything comparable in terms of youthful intensity tempered by sophisticated musical intelligence.