This is a companion-cum-follow-up to a Naxos disc issued in 2000 from the same Hot Springs forces also under the baton of that indefatigable Gottschalkian Richard Rosenberg. Indeed, the final tracks of both discs have the same 1999 recording of Symphony No 1, A Night in the Tropics. Those who, like me, were swept away by the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra at last year’s Proms will take to the exuberant final movement, “Il festa criolla”. Completed and edited by Rosenberg, with its Afro-Cuban percussion (as indicated by Gottschalk), it’s hard to believe that it was written in 1859.

If you have any doubts about investing in a disc with an outfit called the Hot Springs Festival Symphony Orchestra, let me reassure you: if not world-class, they are certainly first-class, superbly drilled by Rosenberg. Sound quality apart, they are more than the equal of the Vienna State Symphony Orchestra who recorded this and Symphony No 2 (À Montevideo), albeit in reconstructions by others, for Turnabout in 1971. The Tarantelle for piano and orchestra was given then in an arrangement by Hershy Kay. Here, it is heard for the first time in Gottschalk’s own recently discovered original score (Michael Gurt the scintillating soloist). His arrangement for orchestra and three pianos/10 hands of Méhul’s overture (reduced here to one pianist and a band of 112) is another premiere recording. In fact the only damp spot in the whole of this jolly affair is the soprano soloist in the Ave Maria arrangement whose voice is a most peculiar mix of boy treble and Alessandro Moreschi, the last castrato.