Vaughan Williams inscribed the manuscript full score of his Eighth Symphony: ‘For Glorious John, with love and admiration from Ralph’. The present account comes from an August 1967 Prom, just over 11 years after Barbirolli’s own world première recording with his beloved Hallé Orchestra.

At nearly 29 minutes, it’s markedly more spacious and flexible than that memorable studio predecessor. Both outer movements in particular have an extra authority and dark-hued majesty (the finale is more defiant than before), while the glorious Cavatina evinces a fervour and compassion that I find deeply affecting (one readily forgives the Hallé strings’ relative fallibility). Nor has any interpreter since made the scherzo wink quite so impishly.

Barbirolli was a doughty champion of Bax, and the composer was apparently only too happy when JB initially proposed refashioning his Oboe Quintet of 1922 for oboe and string orchestra. In the event, the arrangement was only completed some 14 years after Bax’s death, and the affectionate, occasionally rough-edged performance enshrined here (with Barbirolli’s wife, Evelyn Rothwell, a deft soloist) was set down in London with the BBC in attendance during November 1968.

From the Royal Concert of the following year come grand and gutsy renderings of the British National Anthem and Walton’s Crown Imperial as well as a wistfully fragrant account of Delius’ On hearing the first cuckoo in Spring. Rawsthorne’s effervescent Street Corner Overture also enjoys notably enthusiastic, fresh-faced advocacy. Lastly, thanks are due to the Barbirolli Society for preserving on a rare shellac disc Ferrier’s unforgettable delivery of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ (from the November 1951 concert marking the official reopening of Manchester’s Free Trade Hall).

Excellent notes (Michael Kennedy) and good transfers, though the Bax sounds rather more elderly than its recording date would suggest.