The three Butterworth works present a conductor with few problems. They are based on folksongs, written simply and have a pleasant, good humoured appeal. Jeffrey Tate responds to their lyrical charms naturally and easily, and the performances are excellent. Moeran's two pieces are more daring harmonically, more complex in their subtle changes of mood and need more insight in performance than Tate provides. He conducts ''Lonely Waters'' too slowly, and the basic pulse is too weak, with insufficient variations of tempo and rubato, so that the atmospheric, sometimes even ecstatic nature of the music fails to register adequately. Ann Murray makes a pleasing impression in her brief vocal part near the end of the piece. Tate brings a rather earnest, triple-time heaviness to ''Whythorne's Shadow'', so that when the Elizabethan tune undergoes a surprising twentieth-century metamorphosis the effect goes for little. Neville Dilkes's EMI performances, which survive as fill-ups to his reissued version of the Moeran Symphony, show much more insight and feeling for the music.
Bridge's There is a Willow takes the English pastoral style on a journey where tonality and harmony are more radically explored than is the norm. Tate finds in the piece much the right kind of brooding introspection, but Norman Del Mar, on Chandos, makes a stronger impression with more flexible phrasing and a more passionate approach. Two of the three Bax works have been recorded before, but ''Evening Piece'' is new to the catalogue: and this is the first recording of the complete triptych. Though Bax uses a characteristically rich orchestral palette the music is strong in outline and Tate seems at home in its lush romanticism. The hearty rhythms of ''Dance in the Sunlight'', well realized here, bring an interesting, though variable record to an end.
Throughout the programme the ECO's playing is warm and sensitive, while the recording, if not providing quite the same refinement as other recent EMI issues, has plenty of presence and life.'