Themes & variations (BBC Symphony Orchestra) (2001)

"The notion of getting a group of composers to write a set of collaborative variations on a given theme is neither new nor British Beethovens monumental Diabelli Variations began life as part of a similar project. But for some unexplained reason, the idea caught on in Britain after the Second World War. Three sets of composite variations are collected here from the Fifties, Sixties and Eighties; and though the list of names in each case is hardly all-inclusive, they provide intriguing cross-sections of the nations new-musical life in their time. Fascinating, for instance, to find Robin Holloway and startlingly Alexander Goehr surrendering to warm pastoral melancholia in the late-Eighties Variations on Sumer is icumen in."