Grainger? Chamber Music? was my own first reaction: one which will, I think, be shared by many other listeners. And if the term 'chamber music' puts you in mind of a Bartok string quartet, then indeed you will be surprised when you play the disc, for it will turn out to be much less hair-raising: gentle versions for one, or two, or three players of standard Grainger favourites together with some possible new favourites as yet less familiar.
All are beautifully played: this helps a lot. And all are beautifully arranged, which also helps a lot. The arrangements are derived from Grainger's habit of writing almost all his own in flexible scoring ('elastic' scoring is a more fashionable term today), which ensures that with the help of various degrees of cueing the notes of missing instruments into the parts of others present and correct, the music, with a little bit of luck, will always sound reasonably complete. (The process was not at all a Grainger invention, more likely that of Tavan: all cafe orchestra arrangements immediately adopted it.) But even if not the inventor, Grainger was extremely expert at it, there are very few occasions on the present record when older listeners will be put in mind of their local Cadena Cafe trio.
Thus much enjoyment will be possible. But of which music? Those pieces you basically know well you may prefer in their original form (My Robin is to the Greenwood Gone, for example; or perhaps Arrival Platform Humlet, here played, excellently, as a viola solo). Or if there are any you do not know they may strike you as being not only new, but also greatly enjoyable (in my own case the Scandinavian Suite did). Fortunately Beecham will probably be excused from listening to the last piece on the record, for he thought the Colonial Song the worst piece of music ever composed.'