CD: Maxwell Davies: Sinfonia; SCO/ Davies, etc

Regis breathes new commercial life into a pair of recordings that first appeared on the Unicorn Kanchana label in the mid-1980s.

Peter Maxwell Davies's 1982 Sinfonia Concertante, with its solo wind quintet and timpani, is one of those enviably fluent but ultimately rather bland products of his long association with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

The Sinfonia, however, is a rather more intriguing work. It was composed in 1962, when the young Maxwell Davies was immersed in the music of Monteverdi, and was one of three major works that he based on procedures in the 1610 Vespers. Forty years on, the Sinfonia wears well, its four movements coming across as terse and concisely argued against the expansiveness of the concertante work - though the composer's own conducting softens the edges more than one might expect.