Very little of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s piano music has been recorded. If the four works here have previously made it complete to disc then I haven’t come across them. That said, were I adjudicating the entries for some global catalogue of music to be admitted to the standard repertoire, I would have to mark most of what is played here a ‘fail’.

I am unable to discern the American influence in the three Cameos (1904) that the booklet-writer hears, only pleasant enough Edwardian salon music. The same is true of the more extended (9'28") Moorish Dance (also from 1904). More intriguing are the four Forest Scenes, ‘characteristic pieces for piano’ with period titles like ‘The lone forest maiden’ and ‘The phantom tells his tale of longing’. The second movement has a galloping left-hand figure repeated without variation more than 50 times. The six numbers of the Three-Fours Suite experiment with different uses of triple metre. Nos 2 and 6 are by far the best, an opinion endorsed rather gratifyingly by Albert Sandler, who recorded them in the 1930s.

So this disc fills a gap. Sadly, the piano is caught in a claustrophobic acoustic, closely miked and with wayward voicing in the upper treble. Waka Hasegawa’s performances are accomplished and workmanlike, faithful to the letter and spirit of the scores but venturing no further.