No doubt as to the standout item on this latest volume from Chandos devoted to the music of Ruth Gipps (1921 99). Composed in 1940, her Trio for oboe, clarinet and piano is a singularly impressive endeavour for one so young and indicative of lessons well learned under the tutelage of RO Morris, Vaughan Williams and Gordon Jacob at the Royal College of Music (where she also studied piano and oboe). Clocking in at just under 20 minutes, its emotional kernel comprises a deeply felt central Adagio, which is preceded in turn by an Allegro moderato as beguiling as it is cogent. For the December 1941 premiere at a concert of the Society of Women Composers at the RCM, Gipps partnered oboist Marion Brough and clarinettist (and husband-to-be) Robert Baker, and it’s joined here by a clutch of fluent offerings for oboe and piano from the same period (all dedicated to Brough), among them the First Oboe Sonata, Sea-shore Suite and winsome Kensington Gardens Suite. In fact, the latter caught the attention of Arthur Bliss, who, in his role as the BBC’s director of music, asked for an orchestral version, which Gipps duly completed in 1942.

Elsewhere, the unaccompanied oboe miniature The Piper of Dreams casts an evocative spell, and we also get two works featuring cor anglais (Gipps’s own speciality when she was a freelance musician during the 1940s and ’50s): Sea-weed Song (a tenderly expressive creation from 1940) and the much later Threnody (1990), which the composer prefaces thus: ‘Wandering alone in a churchyard, / the mourner finds some consolation / upon hearing the church choir singing Psalm 121: / “I will lift up mine eyes to the hills.”’ That only leaves the Second Oboe Sonata, another one-movement work of substance, written in 1985 and premiered the following year at the Guildhall School of Music by Catherine Pluygers (founder of the London New Wind Festival).

I have nothing but praise for the irreproachable musicianship displayed by Juliana Koch (principal oboe with the LSO), who in turn enjoys sterling support from Michael McHale. For the Trio Koch and McHale join forces with the excellent Julian Bliss for a wonderfully mellifluous display in which the sense of teamwork is palpable. What’s more, Jonathan Cooper’s Potton Hall sound is first-rate, and Lewis Foreman contributes a usefully detailed booklet essay. All in all, a delectable disc.