Thwaites imbues the music with an aptly intimate poetry. Crucially, she knows how to sing a tune, as the abundance of attractive melodies, garlanded with Grainger’s rich pianistic dressing, gives her ample opportunity to demonstrate.

Rarely has the precociousness of his talent been better demonstrated than on this new disc… the rarities, like the more familiar pieces, are played with unapologetic conviction. Penelope Thwaites, a Grainger advocate since well before the current boom, paints the music in bold strokes… a major contribution to the Grainger discography.

There is a personal character to Grainger's music also, which gradually emerges as Grainger expert Penelope Thwaites journeys through the first decade of his composing life… the unique Grainger glow, which comes from wistful chromatic harmonies that are spiked with wit, is definitely there.

A real tonic, this, and unexpectedly stimulating, too. We know how effective Grainger’s colourful orchestrations can be, but in her excellent introductory booklet-note pianist Penelope Thwaites asserts that ‘the balancing of textures to bring out key melodic strands can often be achieved more clearly in Grainger’s multi-piano versions.’ Well, given the superbly poised and concentrated advocacy on show here, that certainly applies to both the extraordinary ‘music to an imaginary ballet’, The Warriors (which, incidentally, lasts 19'19'' and not 9'19'' as printed) and the irresistible Jutish Melody (more familiar in its orchestral guise as the last movement of the Danish Folk-Music Suite), while the amazing English Dance (the work which prompted Faure to exclaim ‘It’s as if the total population was a-dancing!’) now acquires a very Griegian flavour in some of its gentler episodes.

Again Grainger amazes, amuses, arouses, intrigues. These 'Songs for mezzo' originate in Britain (with an excellent sequence of Scottish songs), Jutland and Australia. Some are folksongs collected in the early years of the century; two have words by Kipling, five by Ella, Grainger's wife, and some have no words at all.

This disc takes us to the tenor songs sung by Martyn Hill in his best darkly-inflected voice. These include just over half an hour of Kipling songs with an accent adopted reasonably convincingly.

The CD's title slightly misleads. Not all of these pieces are for chorus and orchestra. Some are for orchestra alone. Nevertheless, the CD gives us Grainger at his most characteristic. Grainger always considered himself primarily a choral composer who occasionally dabbled in short works for orchestra and chamber ensemble. For far too long, almost everybody dismissed Grainger as a lightweight, but, happily, that seems about to change. For one thing, more works have come to light and, more importantly, to performance and recording. Chandos' Grainger Edition counts, in my opinion, as one of the most significant projects in British music.

Stephen Varcoe's nothing less than a marvel. His voice doesn't have either the size or the beauty of, say, Bryn Terfel's, but he sings Lieder. The intonation is dead-on true, the tone clear, the diction immaculate. He phrases sound as supple as a great pop singer, like Bennett, Sinatra, Tormé, or Astaire. He has no annoying vocal mannerisms to snatch attention from the music. He sings superbly even in dialect. Even more wonderful, he has solved the chief problem of a singer of songs: that of "naturalness." He communicates. He knows what the texts are about and can convey them to the listener. He's a singing story-teller. I'd love to hear a Winterreise from him, or a Fauré recital.