Edward Gregson, principal of Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music, studied composition under Alan Bush, who proved an ideal mentor. There is no suspicion of academia here; this is a remarkably individual composer who writes in the mainstream of 20th-century English music, influenced by Walton, Malcolm Arnold and Vaughan Williams. He proves a superb craftsman, with great orchestral flair and genuine melodic gifts. The concertos are among the most rewarding written in the late 20th century.

The programme opens with Blazon (1992), a miniature concerto for orchestra, resourcefully compressed into ten minutes, yet overflowing with energy and ideas. Opening and closing with regal brass fanfares, it introduces each orchestral group in turn, their myriad contributions underpinned by a lyrical theme which sets the whole piece in perspective.

The splendid Clarinet Concerto (1994) – sensitively and exuberantly played by Michael Collins – opens with the musing soloist exploring the basic material inquisitively, and from this grow the spirited, impetuous, rhymically spiky main themes. The second half begins pianissimo on high strings, creating magical textures and an atmosphere of serene tranquillity which sends shivers down the spine. But the dynamism of the first part returns and from this Gregson fashions a richly heart-warming tune which resolves all that has gone before.

Each movement of the Violin Concerto (1999) is prefaced by lines of poetry as inspirational starting points. Certainly the brash, almost vulgar sardonic waltz climax of the first movement does catch something of Oscar Wilde’s ‘Love passed into the house of lust’ (from The Harlot’s House). The elysian, mystical slow movement, rapturously played by Olivier Charlier, takes the listener far deeper than the quoted lines of Paul Verlaine’s Chanson d’automne and the Irish reel of the athletic finale is at one with Yeats’s ‘And the merry love the fiddle, And the merry love to dance’. The soloist leads that dance wildly, even drawing on the energy of the ideas in Blazon.

Stepping out (1996), for string orchestra, briefly dallies in the world of John Adams; but Gregson is no minimalist and the brief polyphonic second section shows how his compositional skills were honed and refined under Bush, while he adds a spontaneous lyrical momentum all his own. Above all, Gregson’s music always flows spontaneously, and any of these pieces would create a great impression at a Prom. The recordings are vivid and warmly atmospheric; if you care about contemporary British orchestral music, I cannot recommend this CD too highly.