Britten: Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings album review – Wilson explores British music’s highway and byways

This is John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London’s third album exploring British music for strings and, like its predecessors, showcases lesser-known repertoire alongside an acknowledged masterpiece. In this case, the byways include music by Ireland, Walton and Goossens with Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings as centrepiece.

Written with the country on the brink of war, Ireland’s Concertino Pastorale comes with a baked-in nostalgia for an imagined rural idyll. Wilson gets to the troubled heart of the matter with a brooding Eclogue and poignant Threnody before finding release in the upbeat Toccata. The Sinfonia of London string sound displays a tremendous warmth in Chandos’ spacious recording, especially evident in Goossens’ lyrical nature poem, By the Tarn.

Walton’s Sonata for String Orchestra, a late work from 1971, is a mix of honey and vinegar with an affecting central Lento. The counterpoint comes up polished and gleaming in the sparkling Presto and a syncopated finale.

Laurence Kilsby and Christopher Parkes are the soloists in an expressive performance of the Britten. Like the young Peter Pears, Kilsby has a light, supple tenor that floats through Cotton’s dusk-infused Pastoral and Keats’ Sonnet and lends brilliance to Tennyson’s Nocturne and Jonson’s Hymn. Parkes, for his part, is sure-footed and sonorous. Horn and orchestra slightly overpower the voice at the terrifying climax of the Lyke-Wake Dirge. Nevertheless, this is a seriously impressive and subtly inflected account by Kilsby, a rapidly rising star.