Piston’s Sixth Symphony (1955) has fared well on disc, this being the fourth recording presently available (Morton Gould’s is nla). Lance Friedel’s booklet note suggests that it is ‘perhaps the best known of [Piston’s] eight symphonies’; I would suggest it comes after the Second, with which it was coupled by Gerard Schwarz in Seattle. Outwardly in the standard four-movement format, the Sixth is in Piston’s trademark tripartite design of prelude, adagio and scherzo-finale but with an additional scherzo, a delightful, percussive Leggierissimo vivace. It was composed for and premiered by Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, whose account remains a special document (if indifferently received at the time). Friedel and the LSO play it superbly, not least the Adagio sereno (as so often with Piston, more complex than the movement marking indicates), with beautifully engineered sound, edging out Schwarz and at least equalling Slatkin’s St Louis account; both of these rivals are all-Piston affairs, however, which collectors may prefer.

BIS’s couplings, however, are well worth investigating. Samuel Jones (b1935) and Stephen Albert (1941 92) were both alumni of the Eastman School of Music and the symphonies recorded both date from 1992. Jones’s Third is a one-movement nature symphony, inspired by the Palo Duro Canyon in Texas. In form, it struck me as a fusion of Beethoven’s Pastoral and Harris’s Third: cleverly structured, superbly scored and expressively appealing. Albert’s First Symphony, Riverrun, won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize but the Second, while an attractive work, does not quite gel together: Friedel remarks that it was something of a new direction for Albert who was, tragically, killed accidentally before completing the orchestration (his pupil Sebastian Currier made a performing version). The LSO sound at home in the repertoire and this is a really entertaining disc. Let us hope for further instalments.