It’s a brave soul who decides to reorchestrate Sea Pictures, one of Elgar’s most miraculously scored, ineffably touching and entrancingly interwoven achievements. This arrangement by British-born and now Illinois-based Donald Fraser (b1947) employs SATB choir, backed by a string quartet and full string section (following the example of Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro). For all the sterling efforts of the ECO and Ralph Allwood’s marvellous Rodolfus Choir under Kenneth Woods’s sympathetic lead, I do miss a personal dimension – that directness of communication, intimacy and vulnerability that a Janet Baker or Sarah Connolly can bring to the texts – to say nothing of the myriad flecks of detail and dappled chiaroscuro that illuminate Elgar’s original canvas.

I’m altogether more taken with Fraser’s scoring of the Piano Quintet, which was sparked by an encounter with Peter Donohoe’s imposingly ‘orchestral’ alliance with the Maggini Quartet (Naxos, 9/97; for what it’s worth, I’d bestow a similar epithet upon John Bingham’s contagiously combustible and thrillingly majestic partnership with the Medici Quartet – Meridian, 6/86). Initially unsure of how to proceed, Fraser was spurred into completing the task when he came across a diary entry by Alice (Lady) Elgar dated September 17, 1918: ‘E. writing wonderful new music – real wood sounds & another lament wh. shd. be in a War Symphony.’ To my ears Fraser’s richly upholstered orchestration works a treat yet also manages to be astutely appreciative of the simmering passion and sense of loss that permeate this wistful creation (the Adagio slow movement is especially affecting). Plaudits, too, for Woods’s characteristically lucid and fervent performance with his own English Symphony Orchestra, opulently captured by balance engineer Simon Fox-Gál working in the University of Birmingham’s shiny new Elgar Concert Hall. Devotees of the composer will, I think, find much to enjoy in this bold offering from Avie.