Even for ardent Brianophiles, Hyperion’s latest release will set pulses racing for its first recording of Agamemnon, the fourth – and shortest – of Brian’s five operas; only Turandot remains (and is yet to be performed at all). As with their marvellous recording of Faust (2/22), Martyn Brabbins and the forces of English National Opera regroup for this intriguing one-acter, based on the Aeschylus play. As with many Brian vocal scores, such as his operas and Fifth Symphony (6/15), there is a certain detachment between the vocal lines and orchestral accompaniment. Here, it underscores the sense of higher powers toying with humanity. The ENO Orchestra provide a flawless account of the score, firmly controlled by Brabbins, who ensures that the weighty scoring does not overwhelm the singers. John Findon in the title-role is the pick of the soloists, though Eleanor Dennis makes a formidable Clytemnestra, coping admirably with some cruelly high, exposed, vocal writing. However, Stephanie Wake-Edwards steals her scene as doom-laden Cassandra, as does the chorus’s appalled, hushed horror at Clytemnestra’s double murder of her and Agamemnon.

Brian felt, unrealistically, that Agamemnon could be staged as a prelude to Strauss’s Elektra and, more practically, that his tiny (10-minute) Twelfth Symphony could serve as operatic prelude to Agamemnon. Certainly, the Twelfth embodies the idea of Greek tragedy in its rapid sequence of four brief movements carrying the weight of a much larger work. Brabbins’s sympathy with Brian’s symphonic world pays dividends in a fast-paced account, perhaps a touch too swift in the funeral march, which lacks the implacability of Fate that Leaper brought to the score in Ireland; however, Brabbins paces the climax superbly, with the harsher final gong stroke as written. Agamemnon and No 12 were written back to back in 1957 at the close of the second phase of Brian’s career, which had begun in 1947 48 with another opera-symphony pairing: the abortive Deirdre of the Sorrows and the Sinfonia tragica that grew from it. One of Brian’s most luminous scores, this is its third recording and arguably the best. Brabbins is, once again, generally fleeter than his rivals while never sounding rushed, and avoids the interpretative blips that marred Alexander Walker’s Naxos account. Brabbins’s orchestra relish the music’s alternation of drama and lyricism (there is a gorgeous long tune at the symphony’s heart) and Hyperion’s sound catches the care with which he balances Brian’s idiosyncratic scoring. Those who, like me, grew up with Myer Fredman’s pioneering original on Lyrita now have a rival version of equal finesse to compare with.

Fredman is the conductor of two items on Heritage’s wonderful archival release (nicely remastered) of Brian’s four last symphonies. His recordings of Nos 29 (1967) and 32 (1968), models of clarity in such unfamiliar scores, were made with the Philharmonia Orchestra in December 1978 in the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios, being broadcast on March 12 the following year. Six days later, the world premiere (made that January) of the single-movement No 31 was broadcast, with Charles Mackerras directing the Philharmonia; he later recorded the work for EMI with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (1987 – nla), but Walker’s Naxos account has more drive than either. Completing the group is Lionel Friend’s compelling performance of the two-movement, darkly expressive Thirtieth (1967), from a memorable invitation concert at Maida Vale in March 1989, which I attended. No 30 is, in my view, one of Brian’s finest symphonies, the perfect manifestation of his late polyphonic style, heavily but attractively scored. Like Sinfonia tragica, its origins may lie in an abandoned opera, one based on Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, which would account for its radically different nature to the celebratory, more classical No 29.

These accounts all stand up well with later competition, whether under Walker’s, Brabbins’s or Leaper’s batons. There is little to choose between Heritage’s remastered sound and its rivals, too, except perhaps Dutton’s for No 30, which has greater presence. However, the gain in having the final four on one album charting Brian’s ultimate symphonic journey outweighs any minor cavils.