When John Steane reviewed Philip Brunelle’s Virgin Classics recording of Ethel Smyth’s Mass in D (1891, rev 1925) in August 1991, 100 years after its composition, he noted that its composer was one ‘whose name everybody knows and whose music nobody has heard’. He believed Brunelle’s recording (sadly nla) would ‘do something to remedy that, in fact a very considerable something’, though in the event I believe it helped reinforce Smyth’s name rather than foster a wider appreciation of her music. It was the coupling of her suffragette anthem, The March of the Women, that received air-time.

The Mass is by far the deeper, grander work, full of extraordinary music and, as Steane noted, considered by some to be her masterpiece. It is a remarkable, individualistic work, looking Janus-faced back to Bach and Beethoven, and forwards to Bax and Brian. This excellent new recording is the third the Mass has received that I know of (the other is a German performance on Audite). Oramo’s pacing is fairly swift, especially in the Kyrie, but never hurried. The larger forces of the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra give the music greater heft, too, paying dividends in Chandos’s warmer, richer sound. Oramo’s soloists are also marginally superior, even if I still prefer Eiddwen Harrhy’s tone to Susanna Hurrell’s.

Oramo’s account of the Overture to The Wreckers is well groomed but fairly driven. Although close in duration to those of Alexander Gibson (reissued under Warner’s Classics for Pleasure imprint) and Odaline de la Martinez – in her recording of the full opera (nla) – the fast music is taken at an exhilarating lick only for the brakes to be slammed on in the lyrical second subject. The competition are more natural but there’s no denying the excitement Oramo generates with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.