A good many readers will, I suspect, already have acquired these performances on their initial appearance as couplings on David Lloyd-Jones’s sterling Bax symphony cycle. November Woods remains the stand-out offering, a performance of thrusting purpose and refreshing involvement – on balance the strongest we’ve had since Boult’s compelling 1967 Lyrita version with the LPO (9/92). (Incidentally, if the recent sessions were anything to go by, Handley’s forthcoming BBC Philharmonic account for Chandos promises to be something else again!) The Garden of Fand is, for the most part, spirited and well held together but ultimately falls some way short in terms of rapt poetry and sheer enchantment by the side of classic readings under Barbirolli (Dutton) and Beecham (we really could do with a reissue of Sir Thomas’s glorious 1947 recording for EMI, 6/92 – nla).

Sonically, I still find Tintagel disagreeably steely and lacking in bloom; nor does Lloyd-Jones’s unfussy conception set the pulse racing like Boult’s mono account (Belart, 9/97) or Barbirolli’s (EMI). The Tale the Pine Trees Knew fares altogether more convincingly but Lloyd-Jones faces stiff competition from Bryden Thomson, whose revelatory interpretation with the Ulster Orchestra possesses glowing atmosphere and refinement in abundance (and the acoustic of Belfast’s Ulster Hall is infinitely kinder than that of Glasgow’s Henry Wood Hall). The outer portions of The Happy Forest go with a twinkling humour and boisterous swagger reminiscent of Eric Coates, yet Lloyd-Jones finds plenty of sultry languor for the gorgeous tune at its reflective heart.

A useful, mostly enjoyable compilation, then, if not the whole story.