William Alwyn’s Naïades – a substantial and conspicuously resourceful fantasy-sonata for flute and harp – is the standout offering on this likeable anthology. Written in 1971 for the then husband-and-wife duo of Christopher Hyde-Smith and Marisa Robles (who went on to make an impressive recording of it for Lyrita, 5/72) and inspired by the sound of the wind in the reeds around Blythburgh on the Suffolk coast (the composer’s home for 25 years), it’s a gratifyingly pellucid creation cast in six interlinked sections, the nimble and idiomatic writing for the flute serving to remind us afresh that it was the composer’s own instrument (such was his prowess that he gained a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music and ultimately went on to play in the LSO). Jennifer Sturgeon (currently principal flute of the Ulster Orchestra) and Tanya Houghton do ample justice to Alwyn’s sensuous and pleasingly varied invention, though there’s notable competition from the likes of Emily and Catherine Beynon (Métier) and Philippa Davies and Lucy Wakeford of the Nash Ensemble (Dutton, 2/07) in particular.

Elsewhere, Houghton steps into the solo spotlight to lend accomplished advocacy to the quietly riveting Intermezzo from Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols and the Suite galactique (2000) by the French-Canadian harpist and composer Caroline Lizotte (born in Quebec City in 1969), a three-movement work of no little imaginative flair and which embraces a sprinkling of ear-pricking, exploratory techniques. Houghton is also responsible for the four shapely song arrangements that make up the rest of the programme. Mezzo-soprano Jenny Bourke makes an affecting job of both Howells’s ‘King David’ (a sublime treatment of Walter de la Mare’s poem) and the traditional air ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ (from Vol 5 in Thomas Moore’s A Selection of Irish Melodies), while soprano Lynda Barrett leaves an endearing impression in Reynaldo Hahn’s heavenly ‘L’heure exquise’ (to words by Paul Verlaine and one of the Chansons grises of 1890) and the serenely idyllic – and, it must be said, wholly disarming – ‘Sweet Chance, that led my steps abroad’ (1926) by the still underrated Michael Head (1900‑76). The rather close-set recorded sound isn’t ideal, but this remains an agreeable collection nonetheless; it’s just a shame there isn’t more of it!