Plenty to enjoy here, not least some flexible, warm-hearted conducting from David Lloyd-Jones, whose Delian sympathies are not in doubt. Chronologically, it’s a wide-ranging programme that starts with Bizet-meets-Elgar in Marche caprice (composed in Paris in 1889) and finishes with the flourishes of the 1931 Fantastic Dance that Delius inscribed to his amanuensis Eric Fenby. There are two further rarities: the fragrant Spring Morning of 1890 breathes a distinctly Norwegian air (its sibling, the 1889 Idylle de printemps, has already been recorded by Lloyd-Jones for Naxos, 6/97) and is followed by the colourful American Rhapsody of 1896, an embryonic (and purely orchestral) dry run for the towering Appalachia of six years later.

I particularly like Lloyd-Jones’s flowing yet deeply felt way with The Walk to the Paradise Garden, which leaves a less artfully self-conscious impression than Mark Elder’s silky Hallé version. In fact, my only reservation of note surrounds the Two Pieces for Small Orchestra, ‘On hearing the first cuckoo in Spring’ and ‘Summer night on the river’, both of which are too robust to work their full magic (Thomas Beecham and Norman Del Mar remain unsurpassed in this 1911-12 diptych, and the same goes for A song before sunrise). Otherwise, the RSNO respond attentively throughout.

Fortunately, the sound is much better blended than on this team’s recent coupling of Bax’s Symphony No 7 and Tintagel (Naxos, A/03), though the slightly hollow acoustic does little to flatter string-tone. Enticing value all the same.