Congratulations to Black Box for rescuing these cello works by Alan Ridout (1934-96), a fine but neglected English composer who studied at the Royal College of Music under Gordon Jacob and Herbert Howells, and later privately with Michael Tippett. The notes may tell us nothing about the underlying sadness of the First Cello Concerto, but I defy anyone who responds to the Elgar Concerto to listen to Ridout’s opening movement without being moved. Then comes a jolly, extrovert Scherzo, but the darkness returns: the closing section is extended, and the cello’s soliloquy lifts rather than depresses the listener.

We know more about the gestation of the Second, the Concerto for Cello and Voices, from the composer’s letters. It is another valedictory work whose three movements (‘Threnody’, ‘Estampie’ and a touching ‘Sarabande’) are associated in the composer’s consciousness with his childhood memories of the destruction of Hiroshima. The vocal accompaniment – not wholly convincing – moves from chorale-like lyricism to exuberance (and clapping), before a final return to tranquillity. Political concerns also lie behind the concerto-grosso-like Third Concerto, which pits solo cello (‘the Prisoner’) against ‘an orchestra of cellos’ (‘the World’). The composer tells us that the mystical conclusion reflects also the suffering and final release of Christ: ‘The captive world awakened and found the prisoner loose, the jailer bound’.

The performances are dedicated and persuasive. Just occasionally, Gérard Leclerc’s intonation is wayward in its highest range, but he plays with warmth and intensity, and finds ready bravura for the scherzando passages. As a gentle postscript, the tale of The Emperor and the Bird of Paradise, written by David Kelsey and narrated simply by Joanna Lumley, is also about a caged prisoner being freed. As the narrator is aware, the piece has much in common with Peter and the Wolf, with an unpretentious flute obbligato well played by Paul Edmund-Davies. It is an effective occasional piece; but the masterpiece here is the First Cello Concerto, amazingly unperformed until now.