In BIS' Chinoiserie, pianist Jenny Lin brings one of the most compelling and relevant themed recitals to be heard on disc in years, a collection of pieces by Western composers that attempts to explore the subject of China in some regard, not only musically but culturally.

Though Australian, more than any figure in English music Percy Grainger consistently blurred the bounds between folk-music arrangements and original composition. Two arrangements of Danish folk songs on this disc, "The Nightingale" and "The Two Sisters," have never been recorded before, while 13 others of the 23 pieces are, in these versions, premiere recordings. An essential issue for Grainger collectors, the music has broad appeal, conveying a direct emotional intimacy in such pieces as the solo piano version of "The Power of Love," a tune that, Grainger noted, "matched my soul-seared mood" after his mother's death. "Molly on the Shore" is among Grainger's best-known folksong arrangements, though not so many will know this vibrantly performed string quartet version.

This disc present the essence of Grainger in many familiar pieces without the density of voices or the enchanting demands of richly dished-up arrangements. The piano is usually a sine qua non. The Arrival Platform Humlet is slightly Bachian. Stephen Orton and Hamish Milne play Scandinavie – a five movement suite for cello and piano. This encompasses soulful, Alfvén jolly and Griegian light romantic. It’s a surprise we do not hear this more often or indeed the other nicely calculated pieces here.

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.

We switch from London to Denmark for this volume. Father and Daughter intricately mixes many solo voices and choir. The gaunt Kleine Variationen-forme is followed by the touching Song of Värmeland for choir. To a Nordic Princess is a lavishly grandiloquent piece first performed in the Hollywood Bowl as a love gift for his soon-to-be bride, Ella Ström. It verges on Richard Strauss at times. He was not averse to Strauss and wrote a piano Ramble on Rosenkavalier. There is an oddly subdued Stalt Vesselil. The very short choir piece Dalvisa is barely heard – a hummed vocalise. After such sensitivity comes the cheery The Crew of the Long Serpent.

Mock Morris, Molly on the Shore and Shepherd’s Hey are edgily chipper. When Grainger is in this vein he looks in the direction of Frank Bridge’s Sir Roger de Coverley – a Britten favourite - and in this case there is a hint of Capriol too. Died for Love is out of the same green meadow as Moeran’s two pieces for small orchestra. Delightful. The Love Verses and the slightly chilly Early One Morning bring home parallels with Balfour Gardiner’s April and Philomela (long overdue for revival). Youthful Rapture (Tim Hugh, cello) has also been recorded by Julian Lloyd Webber who takes more time than Hugh and this piece can bear the slower tempo.

The Power of Rome is a strange work – thoughtful and seemingly with a profound philosophical message. It has some weird pages such as the Holstian fog that is the section from 6:00 onwards. Children’s March in this version has parts for four tenors and four basses rather than the orchestra alone version neatly enunciated by Boult on Lyrita. This is a quick march before tiredness has set in and is as much a jiggy dance as it is a march. As usual with Grainger there are some surprises, skirls and expostulations along the way. Bell Piece is a salon farewell – a touch Puccinian - rather pleadingly sung by James Gilchrist who is caught very early in his career.

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.

This disc offers a lion’s maw worth of the popular Grainger. Many of these pieces are in versions prepared for performance by Leopold Stokowski. All the great hits are there in balmy arrangements, recordings and performances. Somewhat breaking the mould is the Delian warm bath that is Dreamery. Alongside this element we get the phantasmagoric The Warriors – his largest and most exuberantly kaleidoscopic work written between 1913 and 1916 at the instigation of Beecham for the Ballets Russes. It was never performed by them. If you know Chisholm’s splendid First Piano Concerto you will know what to expect. This feral celebration of warriors from every country and age explodes in showers of aural shrapnel with at least a strand or two owed to Stravinsky’s Rite, Van Dieren’s Chinese Symphony, Delius’s Cuckoo and Bax’s Summer Music.

The macabre irony of The Widow’s Party is ghoulishly cheery – the first of six Kipling tracks. They’re not all vocal either. Try the soulful The Running of Shindand and Tiger-Tiger each for five cellos. The sequence concludes with the caramel orient sunset of The Love Song of Har Dyal. Country Gardens plays touchball with Schoenberg in the delightfully grating and ringing Barry Peter Ould-realised version. Scotch Strathspey and Reel is one of Grainger’s most treasurable pieces – about as far away as one could get from the fatuities of tartan culture and pretty sea-shanties. It makes connections far more often with the idiom of The Warriors and of whirlingly possessed dances from the Caledonian highlands.

Works for Wind Orchestra I and II are performed by the RNCM wind ensemble conducted by long-time wind orchestra champions: Tim Reynish and Clark Rundell. Hill Song No. 2 is notable for its skirl and sway – echoing Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony more than once. Faeroe Island Dance is mistily haunting yet with a dancing pattern which is brother to Shepherd’s Hey and Molly on the Shore. The Lads of Whamphray March is irrepressibly cheery and seethes with fascinating invention. The tart windband flavour adds nicely to Shepherd’s Hey! All the favourites are here in new garb. It’s done with a snap and a clicking of the fingers. The slalom-ski runs, percussion ‘graffiti’ and anarchic instrumental slashes in Gum-Suckers’ March are well worth confronting. The punched out Lost Lady Found is the finale of the gamely youthful Lincolnshire Posy. It’s given a weighty punch here and the cross-cutting effects place it clearly in Holst windband territory.

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.

Grainger’s mastery of choral textures shines out of this wide-ranging collection of folk-song arrangements, each highly individual and memorable. Plus his friend Grieg’s finely scored religious settings. Superior performances by Stephen Layton and Polyphony.

Percy Grainger was a weird dude. This is most evident in his orchestrated choral music, here under the direction of John Eliot Gardiner leading his Monteverdi Choir and further aided by the English Country Gardiner Orchestra from 1996.