Having already given us a scintillating version of Delius’s 1907 Piano Concerto with Vernon Handley and the RLPO (CfP, 11/95R), Piers Lane now turns his attention to the composer’s original thoughts. The piece actually began life in 1897 as a single-movement fantasy for piano and orchestra, which Delius subsequently recast as a concerto in three separate movements. First heard in Berlin in October 1904, that’s the version performed here.

The most striking difference surrounds the finale, which Delius discarded for the 1907 revision. It launches with a grittily defiant C minor theme in 5/4 time – and, at 7’56”, you’ll encounter a magical idea that Delius salvaged for his 1916 Violin Concerto. The piano writing throughout is less flamboyant than in the revision yet still offers ample opportunity for winning display. It’s all dashingly dispatched here, and devotees of this composer should certainly investigate.

How odd that, with the honourable exception of Eric Parkin’s Chandos account, recordings of John Ireland’s delectable Piano Concerto never seem to survive long in the catalogue. (We really could do with reissues of Eileen Joyce’s pioneering 1942 account – last available on Dutton, 5/93 – not to mention Parkin’s Lyrita recording with Boult, 10/68, as well as the memorably perceptive Stott/Handley alliance on Conifer Classics, 1/90.)

This Hyperion newcomer possesses many virtues. Piers Lane responds with nimble sensitivity, David Lloyd-Jones secures a tidy response from the Ulster Orchestra and the performance as a whole has a sparkle, eagerness and snap that are most refreshing. Some (myself included) may wish for a rather greater sense of anguished undertow in the slow movement, a reaction that extends to the clean-limbed account of the 1933 Legend. This is one of Ireland’s most haunting and powerful creations but I’m not sure that all of its other-worldly caprice and slumbering disquiet is conveyed here; Parkin’s digital remake with Thomson and the LPO, though somewhat cavernously recorded, is both more poetic and questing. Just how much longer, by the way, shall we have to wait for a CD reissue of Parkin’s famous Lyrita version with Boult (9/66)?

Enough grumbling: the programme is an immensely appealing one and there’s so much that is praiseworthy about this cleanly engineered issue that it deserves a cordial reception.