On track: Tenor tailor-made for Britten

The Scottish Ensemble's new Britten CD features three of the composer's most simpatico works: Les Illuminations, Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge and Serenade for tenor, horn and strings.

The disc doesn't have the catalogue to itself. There are alternative performances available, some of them classic, although not in this particular combination. And there may be some who, in the case of the Serenade, maintain loyalty to one or both of the two Britten/Pears recordings.

Listen to Toby Spence on this recent Linn outing and you will want to update your collection. Here is a young tenor with a prodigious range, whether pouring out his heart to Gracieux fils de Pan in Rimbaud's Antique or singing the praises of Queen and huntress chaste and fair in Ben Jonson's Hymn. His voice runs from voluptuous heights to burnished depths, with a spryness that seems readymade for Britten's tricky settings.

The praise is not all for Spence. The 12 Scottish players, led by violinist Clio Gould and spaciously recorded, bring a real north-of-the-border sinew to music that can so easily be precious. Few have delivered the Scotch snaps in Nocturne quite so snappily.

Horn player Martin Owen also has to cope with past legends, from Dennis Brain to Barry Tuckwell. He has no need to worry as he tosses off the echoing fanfares of the Tennyson Nocturne or joins Spence in the intense, intimate duet of Blake's Elegy.

The strings have the Bridge Variations to themselves. What a terrific work this is, written by the 24-year-old Britten in four weeks when conductor Boyd Neel wanted a British contribution for the 1937 Salzburg Festival. (There is a New Zealand connection here, too, as it was Neel who, 10 years later, commissioned and premiered Lilburn's Diversions.)

The Scottish Ensemble makes Britten's score diverting and more. If the Adagio could take on Barber, the March is a breezy cousin to Prokofiev. There's a Mediterranean melt when Aria Italiana seems to frolic in a sea of mandolins and the glassy cool of Chant is a portent of austerities to come.

The combination of the Scottish Ensemble and Linn Records have been a winner before. It has happened again.

* Scottish Ensemble, Benjamin Britten (Linn CKD 226, through Elite Imports)