The rediscovery of British light music in the past dozen years or so has brought great joy. Yet few of the individual recordings that have resulted have brought quite as much joy as this.

Many of the all-time classics of the genre are here to entice the casual buyer; but tucked away are one or two items bypassed in other releases. Most joyful of all is the superb standard of performance. Barry Wordsworth brings a long experience of such music, and this reveals itself particularly in forthright tempi for the livelier items that have just the right touch of swagger and ebullience. His accentuation of Eric Coates’s Calling All Workers is perfect, and his tempo for Haydn Wood’s march ‘The Bandstand’ brings from the RPO a quite brilliant performance. Trumpets blazing, counter-themes beautifully interwoven, this completely puts in the shade the performance by Slovak forces on Marco Polo (8/97).

By way of peaceful contrast, we get exquisitely shaped versions of Coates’s By a Sleepy Lagoon and Elgar’s Chanson de nuit, the latter brought successfully from under the shade of the better known Chanson de matin. Further value is provided by the inclusion of Hubert Bath’s Cornish Rhapsody, highlighting a work and composer that have rather lost out in the light music revival. Altogether outstandingly compiled, played and recorded. If you want just one CD to represent British light music, this is it.