Earworm alert! Originally composed for brass band and presented here in a splendidly idiomatic orchestration by Philip Lane, Malcolm Arnold’s 1968 march celebrating the launch of a new lifeboat for the Cornish fishing port of Padstow is an out-and-out winner, the horns’ dissonant unison interjections exuberantly aping the sound of the foghorn of the nearby lighthouse on Trevose Head. It’s the irresistible concluding item on a stimulatingly varied and chronologically wide-ranging anthology that launches with the substantial and crowd-pleasing Commonwealth Christmas Overture. Commissioned by the BBC in 1957 to mark the 25th anniversary of the Sovereign’s Christmas Day broadcast, it incorporates elements of calypso carnival music featuring marimba, bongos and electric guitars that Arnold would return to just three years later in his Fourth Symphony (conceived in the aftermath of the 1958 Notting Hill race riots).

Next comes the 1948 Concerto for clarinet and strings that Arnold fashioned for the great Frederick Thurston (1901 53). A terse, at times darkly troubled creation, it enjoys stellar advocacy on this occasion from Michael Collins. The Divertimento No 2 is entirely different again: written for the National Youth Orchestra to perform on its inaugural European tour in April 1950, it’s a superbly effective and wonderfully crafted offering, culminating in a roistering Chaconne. You’ll encounter another, altogether grittier example of that same form in the finale of the 1976 Philharmonic Concerto, a three-movement display piece inspired by the American War of Independence, commissioned by the London Philharmonic and its then chief Bernard Haitink to take with them on tour to the United States that bicentennial year. All of which just leaves the atmospheric, moodily Nordic tone poem Larch Trees, which dates back to 1943, when the budding composer was still occupying the position of principal trumpet with the LPO.

I’m delighted to be able to report that the BBC Philharmonic’s performances under Rumon Gamba’s understanding direction leave absolutely nothing to be desired, and the vividly realistic Chandos sound is demonstration-worthy. An altogether outstanding release.