This disc is something special. It features some of Brian’s most attractive scores – including one of my very favourites, the Wine of Summer Symphony (1937), an earlier recording attempt of which foundered many years ago – and some of the best playing any Brian works have received, as well as vibrantly clear sound quality. This allows every detail of Brian’s unique scoring to be heard; the effect in the early Festal Dance (1908) and Fifth Symphony in particular is stunning.

The Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s performances are beautifully balanced and idiomatic. Brabbins, who has now become Brian’s foremost living exponent, directs with complete understanding of the idiom and the orchestra responds with élan. Roderick Williams is an ideal soloist in Wine of Summer, his superbly nuanced rendering of Brian’s notes and Lord Alfred Douglas’s verses fully the equal of Brian Rayner Cook’s pioneering interpretations last century.

Symphony No 19 (1961) is a scherzo-like work in a fast-slow-fast format, brighter in texture and rhythmically vivid, which may account for why at one time the symphony bore a subtitle, The Dance, later suppressed. Symphony No 27 (1966 67) is perhaps more serious in tone but also unusually light-filled in scoring, especially in the opening movement with its atmospheric flute solos, beautifully played by Katherine Bryan (no relation). Another three-movement design, the opening Allegro is topped and tailed by slower opening and closing sections and the central Lento ma non troppo has two contrasting balletic sections. The programme opens with the third recording of Festal Dance; fine as Leaper’s Irish account is, this newcomer is the best yet.