Top billing on the booklet cover goes to the ambitious Fantasia on the Old 104th, conceived for the same forces as Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy and first performed at the 1950 Gloucester Three Choirs Festival under the composer, with Michael Mullinar (dedicatee of the Sixth Symphony) in the solo role. Unless I’m mistaken, this appears to be only its third commercial recording. Clocking in at around 15 minutes, it’s a set of seven variations (framed by a prelude and gloriously affirmative coda) on Thomas Ravenscroft’s noble 16th-century tune that also featured in The English Hymnal (No 178: ‘Disposer supreme, and judge of the earth’). By no means devoid of sparky invention, nourishing polyphony or festive splendour, the work also revels in some distinctively craggy piano-writing. Mark Bebbington proves a persuasive, concentrated and articulate exponent, and he is backed to the hilt by the City of London Choir and RPO under Hilary Davan Wetton.

Bebbington likewise excels in the commanding account of the early Piano Quintet from 1903 (the instrumentation of which follows the example of Schubert’s Trout Quintet in having no second violin but a double bass instead). The composer eventually withdrew it in 1918, though he did salvage the main idea from the concluding theme and variations for the finale of the Violin Sonata that he wrote in 1954 for Frederick Grinke. Teaming up with four eloquent principals from the RPO, Bebbington sees to it that the big-boned opening Allegro is properly con fuoco as marked, yet there’s lyrical warmth and rapt poetry aplenty for the striking secondary material (which definitely brings glimpses of greater things to come) as well as the Lento outer portions of the slow movement (where I sense a subtle thematic kinship with the ravishing ‘Silent Noon’ from the same year).

Both the original violin-and-piano version of The Lark Ascending and lovely Romance for viola and piano date from 1914, the latter only coming to light after the composer’s death and seemingly inspired by the artistry of Lionel Tertis (the posthumous premiere was eventually given on January 19, 1962, by Tertis’s pupil Bernard Shore). Duncan Riddell and Abigail Fenna respectively do them full justice and enjoy sympathetic support from Bebbington. Ripely truthful sound (Adam Binks) and helpful annotation (Nigel Simeone) bolster the appeal of this admirable release.