Apparently ‘the cockney Wagner’ Josef Holbrooke was neither a cockney (born in Croydon, settled in Haringey) nor a Wagnerian (more on that later). He can hardly be blamed for adopting a German spelling of his forename in order to sound more like the real deal. Holbrooke failed to complete his degree at the Royal Academy of Music in 1896 owing to family problems and, unlike some other modestly talented composers of the period, had no guarantees or privileges to fall back on. He was a music-hall act and a destitute teacher before his career took off.

Gareth Vaughan’s booklet note refers to Holbrooke’s ‘handling of the orchestra being more redolent of Debussy or Ravel’ than Wagner, which seems about right. The mysterious ending to The Birds of Rhiannon, the many instances of entwined woodwinds glancing towards Arcadia (as in the central movement of the Symphony No 3, which also includes a delicious sax solo) and the ripe opportunity to twist the orchestral kaleidoscope presented by the Symphonic Variations all show that Holbrooke was no mean painter of orchestral colour.

What’s left – on the evidence of those three works taken as wholes – is music that’s just a bit thin, anonymous, washy and maybe even caught between worlds (one reason variation form suited him; Henry Wood loved his Variations on ‘Three Blind Mice’). The symphony, Ships, moves from a jingoistic reflection of the British fleet setting forth to destroy to a highly reflective portrait of hospital ships with their sorrowful human cargo (that central movement already mentioned) and a final celebration of merchant ships, which introduces the shanty ‘The Maid of Amsterdam’. Was Holbrooke’s experience of poverty and hardship the reason he felt compelled to ballast his penchant for the mysterious, the luminous and the reflective orchestration with stuff he thought might sell?