Kenneth Fuchs writes colorful and attractive music that falls gratefully on the ear but has sufficient backbone and variety to reward repeated listening. United Artists is a zippy concert-opener full of orchestral brilliance and good tunes. Fuchs' willingness, in common with many contemporary composers, to indulge a fondness for tuned percussion (bells, glockenspiel, etc.) gives the piece a certain Hollywood glitz, but that's no crime in such extrovert music.

The centerpiece of this program consists of three chamber works, all subtitled "Idyll", for brass quintet, woodwind quintet, and a mixed quintet of strings and winds. The latter work is surely the most interesting, perhaps because of its more varied timbral possibilities, but it almost goes without saying that anything called "Idyll", from Siegfried's onward, lasts about 20 percent longer than it needs to. Fuchs doesn't quite avoid this trap, and I wouldn't suggest playing all three of them back to back, but there's no denying the music's finely honed ensemble writing and abundance of quality ideas.

Saving the best for last, Canticle of the Sun is a horn concerto written for LSO principal Timothy Jones, who plays it extremely well. The piece is lovely--full of good tunes taking full advantage of the solo instrument's lyrical and bravura possibilities--and scored with a fine sense of the horn's ability to combine and interact with the various orchestral sections. JoAnn Falletta leads the LSO in performances that offer the right feeling of proprietary confidence, and all five pieces are very well recorded, resulting in a worthwhile disc, by a composer certainly worth watching (and hearing).

--David Hurwitz