The appearance of this Somm release marks 100 years since the premiere of the brilliant 19-year-old William Walton’s Façade. It took place on January 24, 1922, in the drawing room of Osbert Sitwell’s Chelsea home. His sister, Edith, famously delivered her allusive, at times tongue-twisting verse through a drop curtain by means of a Sengerphone (a device akin to a megaphone), while the composer supervised the four accompanying instrumentalists. Only six of the 18 numbers performed that evening survived Walton’s many revisions; indeed, it wasn’t until 1951 that the work was published in its definitive form.

Bruce O’Neil (who serves as Head of Music at the Royal Shakespeare Company) masterminds a commendably communicative display and secures spirited results from his seven-piece ensemble drawn from Stratford-upon-Avon’s Orchestra of the Swan. He has also taken the opportunity to reassign duties between the two reciters, thereby enhancing the sense of dialogue and element of sly humour – as well as stoking some extra fun along the journey. So we find that Tamsin Dalley and Roderick Williams simply have a ball in such rollicking numbers as ‘Hornpipe’, ‘Country Dance’, ‘Polka’, ‘Valse’, ‘Scotch Rhapsody’ and ‘Sir Beelzebub’. Nor do these personable artists undersell the frequently piercing beauty, bittersweet nostalgia and darker currents in Walton’s astonishingly inventive sequence (‘En famille’, ‘Lullaby for Jumbo’, ‘Black Mrs Behemoth’, ‘The man from a Far Countree’, ‘By the Lake’ and ‘Four in the Morning’ all make their mark). Enjoyably agile and agreeably characterful though this newcomer is – and at the risk of repeating myself! – don’t overlook the inimitable Dame Edith herself with Peter Pears and Anthony Collins (an undisputed classic from 1954, still sounding superb and available on Australian Eloquence).

The generous coupling comprises a scaled-down treatment of the tremendously compelling ‘Shakespeare Scenario’ that Christopher Palmer assembled from Walton’s magnificent 1944 score for Laurence Olivier’s big-screen adaptation of Henry V. Kevin Whately does a sterling job in the roles so memorably taken by Christopher Plummer on Neville Marriner’s spectacular 1990 Chandos recording, while Palmer’s lustrous original scoring for orchestra and chorus has been skilfully reduced for chamber forces by Edward Watson. Commissioned by the English Serenata to share the bill with Façade (and first given in 1992 under Guy Woolfenden’s lead with John Nettles as narrator at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall), it makes for some 42 minutes of handsome entertainment and has been vividly captured by sound engineer Ben Connellan working in the accommodating acoustic of Stratford Play House. Admirable presentation, too: Christopher Morley is a perceptive annotator, and full texts are included.