This album reflects a tour undertaken by Thomas Hampson and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, for which several new string-orchestra arrangements of songs were commissioned from David Matthews. Its title, an interview with both Hampson and the orchestra’s artistic director, Candida Thompson, tells us, aims to capture the sense of the ‘ebbs and flows of one’s life’ they feel defines the programme; whatever the case, it makes for an enjoyable and often beguiling disc.

Reactions to the arrangements themselves will likely come down to personal taste, though. Several of Matthews’s treatments feel reasonably straightforward – and he certainly doesn’t go in for full-scale ‘recomposition’ – but there are times when the string orchestra sound just feels a little genteel: it can take some of the acerbic edge off the Wolf and can give the Schubert a slight Bierdermeier veneer.

Wolf’s ‘Anakreons Grab’ and the spiky ‘Der Rattenfänger’ are terrific, though, the latter showing real imagination in exploiting the whole timbral range of the strings. Schubert’s D920 ‘Ständchen’ (to Grillparzer’s text, although the poorly edited booklet confuses it with the Rellstab setting from Schwanengesang) is given in Bob Zimmerman’s 2015 arrangement; it, too, is a delight.

I was less convinced by Brahms’s Four Serious Songs, where the string colours seem inherently lighter and less autumnal than those of a brooding Steinway. Here, too, the lightness of Hampson’s voice, which has lost a fair amount of its juice and honey over the years, is another factor. The characteristic intelligence and sensitivity are very much in evidence, though, which help make ‘Dover Beach’ a touching final track.

The playing of the Amsterdam Sinfonietta is brilliantly alive and responsive throughout, and their witty, rapier-sharp performance of Wolf’s Italian Serenade is guaranteed to raise a smile. Channel Classics’ engineering is immaculate.