Subtitled ‘symphonic colours of the woodwind orchestra’, Divine Art’s ‘Chromosphere’ is an engaging collection of attractive new works – all receiving first recordings – in splendidly mellifluous performances by the Czech Philharmonic Wind Ensemble conducted by Shea Lolin. It forms a pair with their recent release ‘Twisted Skyscape’ (DDX21118, named from one of two works by Christopher Hussey, who features again here).

Keiron Anderson’s Alice in Wonderland (2016) originated in a didactic project for Shea Lolin at Leeds College of Music. Playing continuously, the music is divided into 11 sections inspired by key events in Alice’s adventures. Although including some of the darker episodes – ‘The Queen’, ‘The Trial’ – playfulness and jollity are the watchwords for this bright concert-opener, ideal for children of all ages. Things take a more mercurial turn in Judith Bingham’s glorious set of five miniatures, Mozart’s Pets (2021), each based on creatures that Mozart – an avid animal lover – encountered, whether the fox terrier ‘Miss Bimperl’, the anonymous ‘London Cat’ or the elegiac final ‘A Canary Sings by Mozart’s Death Bed’. The central ‘Dawn Chorus in a Viennese Bird-seller’s Shop’ is a riot of quotation and allusion, but even more fascinating is the tiny fourth movement, a brilliant evocation of a grasshopper, complete with orthopteran clickings from the wind instruments’ keys!

The other peach on the programme is Charlotte Harding’s diptych Bright Lights (2010, for wind band; the expanded wind-orchestral version of 2023 is given here). Intended to convey ‘the excitement and apprehension felt when moving to a new city’, the titles of the two movements reveal the tone of each, ‘Luminous’ in the first span, ‘Energetic, colourful’ in the second. By contrast, Kamran Ince’s Domes (another wind-orchestral reworking, from 2022, of a 1993 orchestral original) is a vivid contemplation of the ancient skyscapes of Rome and Constantinople. Hussey’s tone poem Child of the Wandering Sea (2018) was ‘inspired by the marine life found at increasingly deep oceanic zones’, from the energetic ‘Sunlight’ to the inky abyss of the closing ‘Midnight’. This provides Lolin and the players the opportunity to show off their virtuosity, flawless intonation and ensemble. Recommended.