British Tone Poems,

Vol. 2 Works by Bliss, Cowen, Fogg, Foulds, Goossens, P Hadley, Howell & Vaughan Williams

BBC Philharmonic/rumon Gamba Chandos CHAN 10981 70:16 mins Volume one of this series offered six tasty orchestral tone pictures from (mostly early) 20th-century Britain. Now we have eight more, whisking the listener up and away to places as varied as Wiltshire’s countryside (Vaughan Williams’s Harnham Down), Derbyshire’s peaks (Patrick Hadley’s Kinder Scout), the Norwegian fjords (Eric Fogg’s Merok) and the crazy world of Greek myths (Dorothy Howell’s Lamia). Even so, numerous works share a ruminative nature, with drifting melodies succulently orchestrated – none more so than the memorably melancholy landscapes of Fogg’s Merok, a useful reminder of a talent lost in 1939 when the composer fell in front of a London Underground train (the coroner recorded an open verdict).

After further ruminations by Vaughan Williams and the aqueous ripples of Goossens’s By the Tarn, we’re more than ready to meet a snake woman with alluring eyes – the exotic subject of Howell’s Lamia, much promoted by the conductor Sir Henry Wood in the 1920s. The longest piece here (14 minutes), it’s confident, quick-changing, full of blood and muscle, and clearly relished by Rumon Gamba’s orchestra as an opportunity to let rip. Other chances are eagerly grabbed in Foulds’s radiant ramble April-england and Bliss’s swirling, decidedly metropolitan Mêlée fantastique.

The two premiere recordings are of weaker items: Sir Frederick Cowen’s Rêverie, an elegant piece of nothing from 1903, and Hadley’s Kinder Scout, not as striking as the landscape evoked. Neither, though, makes any lasting dent in the genuine pleasures this British picture album affords. Geoff Brown PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★