Mark Tanner’s two-disc York Bowen album is subtitled “the undiscovered works for piano” and includes no fewer than eight first recordings. Until recently shabbily neglected, Bowen now enjoys a remarkable renaissance launched by Stephen Hough’s classic selections and editions, a projected complete cycle from Joop Celis, fine recordings of three of the four piano concertos from Michael Dussek and with a promise of the Third and Fourth Piano Concertos from Danny Driver. Such largesse pays eloquent testimony to a romantic change of direction and to a composer in love with a roseate past and numb to a less congenial present. At his least distinguished Bowen can seem indulgent and diffuse, at his finest a generous-hearted romantic. Here, the First Ballade and Fantasia (dedicated to Clinton Gray-Fisk, the formidable critic and tireless fighter on Bowen’s behalf) are grandly ambitious and pianistically opulent, particularly when played by Tanner with such enviable breadth and poetic commitment. Evening Calm and Idyll are over-extended and Turnstiles is an eccentric oddity. But it is hard to resist the 1904 Nocturne’s expressive beauty and if the ghosts of many composers haunt Bowen’s pages they never erase his distinctive and personal idiom.

Tanner’s performances are magnificent. Most pianists would give an arm and a leg, or at least a finger, to achieve his sumptuous sonority and seamless legato. A man of many parts, he has written his own tribute to Bowen, and Priory has captured all of his warmth and affection.