The composer has written extensively for film and television, and his gift for musical characterisation illuminates every bar of My Family and Other Animals. Here is a delightful human menagerie, a family circle with its typical variety of awkward and amiable relatives, beautifully portrayed in music of beguiling simplicity by Edmund Jolliffe.

Technically, for beginners and early-grade players, there is an important lesson that musical expression is in essence the expression of personality, ...