Haunted Loneliness Orchestral music by Benjamin Britten, heard by PATRIC STANDFORD Fuga Libera    FUG534

Jean-Paul Minali-Bella is a viola player who graduated from the Paris Conservatoire. One of his teachers there was the instrument maker Bernard Sabatier, and one of his creations is the arpegina. This is a large viola with a distinctive tone colour that seems to combine those of the cello, viola da gamba and viola, thus coming close to the instrument designed by Viennese instrument maker Johann Georg Staufer in 1824, and called an arpeggione. It was also called the 'guitar violoncello' as it was intended as a bowed imitation of the guitar, with six strings and frets. It did not last long, surviving only because Schubert wrote a sonata for it. Sabatier's has five strings (a low E enriches the others) and stands a good chance of living much longer. It has certainly provided a good vehicle for Britten's Lachrymae -- Reflections on a Song of Dowland for viola and strings

and for the second of Two Portraits, a self-portrait written in 1930 -- a piece that even so early seems to embody his haunted loneliness exquisitely.

Laurent Quénelle, the leader and director of the European Camerata, produces an inspired performance of Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge, as soloist in the Bourée Classique

and the orchestra shows superb blending and precision in the Moto Perpetuo.

There is also a lively, imaginative and delicate performance of the Simple Symphony.

Record Box is Music & Vision's regular series of shorter CD reviews