It appears we have to thank Muir Mathieson (then music director of the Ministry of Information) for luring Bax out of semi-retirement, when, in the summer of 1942, he suggested to the newly appointed Master of the King’s Music that he might like to provide the music for a documentary about Malta (recently awarded the George Cross for its heroism in the face of repeated air-raids). Privately, Bax was rather dismissive about the project (‘totally unstimulated by self,’ he confided to his brother Clifford), but in the event he produced a 24-minute score of strong appeal. Happily, Kenneth Alwyn’s fine recording with the RPO is still listed (Cloud Nine, 6/86). This new issue gives us Bax’s music for the second reel only, which culminates in a stirring march of which Walton himself would have been proud.

Six years later, it was again Mathieson who persuaded Bax to apply his skills to the big screen, this time for David Lean’s classic 1948 version of Oliver Twist. Working to a tight deadline, Bax overcame his initial doubts (and personal antipathy towards Dickens’s novel) to fashion a score of great character and inventive flair. Prospective purchasers should make a bee-line for the spectacular ‘Storm’ (track 2), ‘Oliver’s sleepless night’ (track 11, which includes a solo piano part written for Harriet Cohen) and the rollicking ‘Fagin’s romp’ (track 14). Towards the close, listen out for Bax’s incorporation of the noble tune from his 1916 elegy In Memoriam (so movingly premièred by Vernon Handley and the BBC PO on Chandos, 7/99) and the two different finales (one triumphant, the other featuring Bax’s original, soft ending).

Plaudits are due to Graham Parlett, whose reconstruction of the entire score adds well over half an hour of music to the 25-minute suite recorded by Alwyn and draws upon a variety of sources, not least a copyist’s manuscript (rescued from a skip in Brighton!) of a suite compiled by Stanford Robinson containing material rejected from the final print.

Suffice it to say, Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic sound wholly attuned to Bax’s distinctive idiom, and the Chandos recording possesses lustre, glow and realism in abundance. A super release, this, authoritatively and extensively annotated by Lewis Foreman and Graham Parlett.