As Martin Anderson, founder of Toccata Classics, comments in his introductory note, Brian’s one-time reputation as ‘the most prolific symphonist since Haydn’ – never correct, as the examples of Gyrowetz and Vanhal prove – eclipsed his operatic output. He composed five stage works in all, the same number as Tippett, yet none has been staged, and one (Turandot) has never been heard at all. The Cenci has been performed once, in concert, the performance featured here.

The huge, comic The Tigers (1916 29) aside, Brian’s style of opera – his remaining four all products of the 1950s – was symphonic in concept, the action fast-moving (blink and you might miss something vital), matched by music of equivalent urgency. The Cenci, Brian’s third opera, is relatively short, its eight scenes grouped into a single act, preceded by a large Preludio tragico, which has been heard as a concert item and recorded by Toccata Classics (2/12). The Cenci was composed in 1951 52 from Shelley’s gripping verse drama, coincidentally a year or so after Berthold Goldschmidt completed his expressively different – though just as dark – treatment (7/95, A/19). Brian made his own reduction of the original five-act drama (included as a separate booklet), omitting Shelley’s second and third acts entirely, to focus specifically on Beatrice and her relationships with those who abused her or sought to: her incestuous father, the Count, and the scheming priest Orsino, who wants Beatrice for himself.

Although a continuous structure, Brian’s dramatic sequence of scenes divides in two, pivoting around the offstage murder of the Count during scene 5; indeed, all the violent or gruesome activity – including the Count’s abuse of Beatrice, the murders (scene 1 opens in the aftermath of an unspecified killing that the Count has perpetrated) and the papal court’s torturing of the criminals – takes place out of view. This mirrors the reluctance by Shelley (whose preface to his play is reproduced in the booklet) to specify the Count’s incest, though the fact of some ‘ill-treatment’ by her father is mentioned in the letter Beatrice requests Orsino put before the Pope; Orsino, of course, has other plans.

Conductor James Kelleher assembled a fine cast for the performance, with David Wilson-Johnson magnificent as the unrepentant Cenci, Ingveldur Ýr Jónsdóttir as his long-suffering wife Lucretia, Stuart Kale as Cardinal Camillo and Justin Lavender as the despicable Orsino. All are eclipsed ultimately, however, by Helen Field as Beatrice, the strongest character of all, feisty in scene 3 where she defies her father, resilient in scene 7’s trial and radiant in her acceptance of her fate (execution for parricide) at the close. The Millennium Sinfonia play astonishingly well, sounding every bit the opera orchestra. Toccata Classics’ sound, originally recorded by Geoff Miles of Floating Earth, has been magnificently remastered by Adaq Khan. Brianophiles will, no doubt, acquire this set, but so should anyone with the slightest interest in 20th-century opera. Strongly recommended.