This may well be the most rewarding volume yet in Dutton’s hugely enterprising John Foulds series. Particularly striking here is the powerfully evocative and opulently scored Prelude from The Vision of Dante (1905 08), a concert opera in three acts for chorus and orchestra which sets Longfellow’s translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Both Elgar and Bantock sang the praises of this large-scale opus but it was never performed in Foulds’s lifetime. A similar fate befell the contemporaneous (1906) Lento e Scherzetto for cello and orchestra, a bewitchingly lovely diptych that would seem to comprise the last two movements of a jettisoned concerto. Next comes a 17-minute suite from Foulds’s 1924 incidental music for George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. It’s strong in personality and crammed full of first-rate invention, as for that matter is the eloquent, oboe-led Prelude from the score that Foulds supplied for a 1925 London production of Euripides’s Hippolytus. There’s also much that is endearing about the five-movement Puppet Ballet Suite of 1932 34, whose five numbers possess a nonchalant, Gallic flair. Last, but not least, we get two crowd-pleasing encore items from Foulds’s final years in India: the roistering Grand Durbar March (1937 38) makes a terrific splash (its trio section cleverly incorporates a raga melody), while the winsomely delicate Badinage (1936) boasts two maddeningly catchy tunes that are hard to dislodge from one’s brain.

Throughout, Ronald Corp secures a chipper and affectionate response from the BBC Concert Orchestra. A truly excellent anthology, this, justly dedicated to the memory of the irreplaceable Malcolm MacDonald, the composer’s doughtiest champion.