Lambert was born in the same year as Tippett, who disparagingly referred to his precocious contemporary as the whiz-kid of their generation. For the concert-programmers of today, he clearly doesn’t merit the hoo-ha surrounding the Tippett centenary, but more’s the pity, if this sparkling disc of five orchestral works, all written when Lambert was between the ages of 19 and 22, is anything by which to judge his worth. In 1925, Diaghilev, in search of a new English ballet score, was impressed enough by Lambert’s playing of his suite dansée Adam and Eve to commission it for his Ballets de Monte Carlo, changing the title to Romeo and Juliet, and hiring Nijinska to choreograph it. The ballet wasn’t a success, but the score is dazzlingly written in the mould of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella. The youthful Lambert’s influences were eclectic and one can hear echoes of Ravel in his Piano Concerto of 1924, whose orchestration (for strings, two trumpets and timpani) was realised for Jonathan Plowright, above, by Edward Shipley and Giles Easterbrook in 1988. Plowright and Lloyd-Jones are masterly advocates for this brilliant, entertaining music. Four stars