Volume 2 in Edward Gardner’s Lutosławski series for Chandos brings us six vocal compositions spanning more than five decades, the earliest of which is the hauntingly beautiful Lacrimosa for soprano and orchestra of 1937. Conceived as part of a never-completed Requiem, it might easily have come from a late work by Szymanowski. Lucy Crowe is in ravishing voice and displays comparable charm and composure in both the rustic Silesian Triptych (1951) and miniature ‘Sleep, sleep’ (the third of the four Children’s Songs from 1954). She also shines in Chantefleurs et Chantefables, Lutosławski’s penultimate opus, completed in 1990. These gem-like, at times distinctly Ravelian, settings of nine poems from Robert Desnos’s eponymous collection for children, make an enchantingly varied and witty 20-minute sequence. And Crowe’s immensely personable rendering must be deemed a worthy successor to distinguished versions by Dawn Upshaw, Valdine Anderson and Solveig Kringelborn.

Of course, Desnos’s surrealist texts had previously fired Lutosławski’s imagination in Les espaces du sommeil, an infinitely subtle and endlessly absorbing masterwork written for Fischer-Dieskau in 1975. Baritone Christopher Purves proves a wonderfully secure exponent in a reading which combines tingling atmosphere and arresting drama to consistently riveting effect. As for the sublimely delicate and exquisitely rapt Paroles tissées, tenor Toby Spence acquits himself with enormous credit in what is arguably Lutosławski’s first fully mature canvas, originally fashioned for Peter Pears (who first performed it at the 1965 Aldeburgh Festival). In fact, all three vocal protagonists benefit from the most glowing and refined support imaginable from Gardner and the BBC SO, not to mention the Chandos production team. A terrific CD: roll on the next instalment!