This is an enticing package. You’d have to be a fairly diehard Anglophobe not to be attracted to a new anthology of Finzi’s shorter orchestral works, performed by one of Britain’s smartest young orchestras and conducted by Nicholas Collon, who’s already brought such clear-eyed vision to English music from Vaughan Williams to Jonathan Harvey. The artwork is beautiful, and with two youthful and widely admired soloists on board – pianist Tom Poster in the Eclogue and violinist Thomas Gould in the Introit – there’s a lot here to enjoy.

Collon and the Aurora Orchestra play this music with genuine freshness. Phrases are expressively moulded, inner parts nurtured and long lines beautifully sustained, with a lively attention to detail that pays real dividends: the way, for instance, that the woodwinds and solo string lines gently come forwards then step back in the Three Soliloquies from Love’s Labour’s Lost. And listen to the violins’ ascent from 2'20" onwards in A Severn Rhapsody to hear just how much ardour these players can generate. The recording, made at the Fairfield Halls, is warm with a slight bloom that suits this music well.

Collon’s soloists measure up well against the competition, too. Gould’s Introit has more of a sense of conversation than Lesley Hatfield’s equally fine Naxos account, and set against Piers Lane’s recording with the ECO, there’s an attractively inward quality to Poster’s Eclogue. The Aurora Orchestra respond sensitively to each, and this feels like chamber music – a good sign in this most thoughtful of composers.

So what’s the problem? The disc is padded out with bits of Dies natalis, torn from context, and a number of songs and other extracts, newly arranged for solo saxophone or horn plus strings. What were the Finzi Trust (who supported this recording) thinking? ‘To aid wider appreciation’, according to the blurb; in which case, why not spend the soloist budget on recording the real thing – the Clarinet Concerto, say?

The arrangements are tasteful, the soloists eloquent. But the supremely self-critical Finzi was intensely aware of the differences in texture and meaning between instrumental and vocal music. If you’re one of those unenlightened souls who dismiss Finzi as a purveyor of generic ‘smooth classics’, these arrangements will do nothing to change your mind. A black mark against an otherwise commendable disc.