“A Celebration of the Artistry of Richard Hickox (1948-2008)” is how Chandos aptly describe this generous overview of an endearingly modest, good-humoured and always approachable maestro, whose cruelly early death robbed the classical music world of such an affirmative force and versatile talent. Hickox’s extraordinarily valuable and varied recorded legacy comprises more than 280 discs for Chandos alone – a daunting task for any compiler but on the whole shrewdly effected here. The radiant opening “Seascape” from Frank Bridge’s The Sea makes a glorious curtain-raiser – and there are plenty of other home-grown gems to warm the cockles, not least the excerpts from Vaughan Williams’s The Pilgrim’s Progress and Britten’s Albert Herring and Peter Grimes (Philip Langridge riveting in the Mad Scene from Act 3 – a set of which Hickox was especially proud). Other series featured include Elgar, Arnold and Haydn symphonies, Menotti operas (Susan Bullock stealing the show in “To this we’ve come” from Act 2 of The Consul), as well as the mammoth Percy Grainger Edition.

Needless to say, there are also selections from Hickox’s Gramophone Award-winning discs of Britten’s War Requiem (“Libera me”), Hummel’s Mass in D, Delius’s Songs of Sunset, Stanford’s Songs of the Sea (a truly roistering “The Old Superb” with Gerald Finley on invincible form) and, last but most certainly not least, the original 1913 version of Vaughan Williams’s A London Symphony. Even so, I must admit to being a little surprised that nothing from either of Hickox’s two Kenneth Leighton CDs with the BBC NOW (7/08, 1/09) was included: both volumes strike me as among the very best things he left us and contain unfairly overlooked repertoire of uncommon eloquence and lasting value that audibly fired his enthusiasm to inspirational heights. It’s precisely the sort of important project that Richard was simply brilliant at getting off the ground and which now, thanks to the efforts of the Richard Hickox Foundation, can hopefully continue. All profits from the present compilation will be going to the Foundation, and you can enquire about becoming a Friend or making a donation by sending an e-mail to richardhickoxfoundation@intermusica.co.uk; it’s the very least this much-loved conductor would have wanted and his glowing reputation deserves.