Classical home listening: Sinfonia of London’s Ravel, Berkeley, Pounds: Lieder ohne Worte from Igor Levit

John Wilson and his peerless orchestra’s latest marries the familiar and the scarcely known. And Mendelssohn’s romantic miniatures speak volumes for the star pianist

• The Sinfonia of London, if any reminder is needed, has had two lives: as a recording orchestra in the 1950s with at least 300 film soundtracks to its name, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo; and as a special projects orchestra, with an emphasis on recording, relaunched in 2018 by the British conductor John Wilson. Players, several with principal roles in other orchestras, meet a few times a year. The description may make it sound like a standard freelance band. Instead, it is fast becoming one of Europe’s elite orchestras.

Characteristically, their latest album, Ravel, Berkeley, Pounds: Orchestral Works (Chandos), is a marriage of the familiar and the scarcely known, all with interconnections. Maurice Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin – played with impeccable virtuosity and a sense of weightless clarity, follows on from the ensemble’s recent release of the complete ballet Daphnis et Chloé, by the same composer. Lennox Berkeley’s Divertimento (1943) is an elegant, many-faceted work, with French accents, worthy of a place in the mainstream.

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