Commissioned in 1924 by Hamilton Harty, Moeran’s Symphony in G minor has been described as ‘one of the finest pieces of nature music ever written’. In it Moeran used elements of Irish and Norfolk song to create a highly evocative and atmospheric account of the British countryside. The Sinfonietta, composed in 1944, stands almost alone in Moeran’s orchestral repertoire as a piece in which he quite deliberately attempted to forge new forms and develop new ideas, using comparaitively lean orchestration to achieve a sense of clarity and space. By his own admission, Moeran was inspired, when composing this work, by the beauty of the Shropshire countryside that had also inspired the poet A. E. Housman.