Janacek: Mists of Childhood – Accentus/Pieter-Jelle de Boer

Janacek's choral Rikadla (Nursery Rhymes) are a childlike delight, with a folksily appealing tunefulness, nursery-vivid instrumental colouring, and irresistible titles (The beetroot got married, Granny's crawled into the elder bush). This new Accentus performance is delectably light, but comes without all the instrumental colours – it's a modified version of Erwin Stein's reduction for voices, viola and piano, used here to get back to the kind of scale Janacek had in mind when he began the piece. It works surprisingly well, and there's real appeal in the selection of other choral works, particularly Placici fontana (The weeping fountain), for soprano (Caroline Chassany), flute (Raquele Magalhães) and female chorus. For good measure, there's also a performance of In the mists for piano solo by Alain Planès. url.ie/8fjv