In the latest instalment of the Nash Ensemble's Realms of Gold series, celebrating Elgar's contemporaries and successors as well as his 150th anniversary, Elgar's origins in amateur music-making in Worcester were recalled in a selection of movements composed in the late 1870s for a wind ensemble comprising himself and friends. Occasional flashes of personality shone through lightweight pieces, though the Nash could have given them higher definition and a dash more character.

Subsequent English composers have benefited from the expertise and status Elgar acquired. Firm technical foundations are apparent on every page of Arthur Bliss's 1927 Oboe Quintet. Here the string playing showed a vital response to the volatile mood-swings of Bliss's imagination, though Gareth Hulse's oboe sounded curiously muted in what is, after all, the principal role.

Hulse was more forthcoming when he switched to the cor anglais for The Curlew, the depressive Yeats settings that constitute Peter Warlock's greatest achievement. Fronting the ensemble was tenor John Mark Ainsley, who maintained a firm, clear tone while bringing into play a subtle range of colours to mirror the stark solitariness and intense sense of loss that permeate the texts.

Equally eloquent was his contribution to Vaughan Williams' Housman settings, On Wenlock Edge. Ainsley sought out the perfect balance between words and notes, conveying the songs' fatalism and underlying death-wish, and highlighting the way their self-doubt plummets into despair. In their finest performance of the evening, the Nash players seconded his every gesture while conjuring up Vaughan Williams' windswept hills and bell-haunted skies.