Click here to resize this module This enterprising album of English music for strings from the 1930s embraces some of the finest string playing ever put on disc by a British orchestra. Listening to the final fugue from Benjamin Britten’s Variations On A Theme Of Frank Bridge, played at the speed the composer noted in the score, is an exhilarating experience and perhaps explains why, 30 years later, Britten’s own recording is much slower; more likely to be a technical decision based on what his orchestra could manage than an artistic one. In this work, commissioned by the English conductor Boyd Neel for a 1937 Salzburg Festival concert, the 23-year-old Britten revealed the genius that was to take him to the very pinnacle of his profession.