Welcoming Vernon Handley’s world premiere recording of the Second Symphony (7/96), I commented on ‘the epic grandeur and turbulent demeanour of Goossens’s admirably ambitious inspiration’; further hearings have only strengthened my admiration for a work whose rugged beauty and fretful, slumbering power seems to have much in common with Bax’s Second Symphony (whose British premiere Goossens gave in May 1930). Handley also sees to it that the invigorating Concertino and delectable Fantasy come off splendidly. The Sydney SO perform the music of their former chief conductor with unstinting commitment.

Handley’s lucid traversal of the imposing First Symphony (1940) has a pleasing sense of growth and integration that gives it the edge over David Measham’s otherwise extremely useful Adelaide SO account for Unicorn-Kanchana (11/80 – nla). Certainly, the West Australian SO respond with infectious gusto both here and in the scampering Tam O’Shanter. Joel Marangella makes a tidy showing in the attractive Oboe Concerto that Goossens wrote in 1928-29 for his brother Leon (a reading somewhat lighter on its feet, albeit less pungently characterised, than Ruth Bolister’s on ASV) and also doubles up on cor anglais in the first commercial recording of the 1958 Concert Piece, another family affair, this time conceived for Leon and his two sisters, Marie and Sidonie (hence the unusual instrumentation of two harps, oboe, cor anglais and orchestra).

The disc’s remaining contents span nearly five decades. Goossens was a 19-year-old student when, in June 1912, he was invited by his teacher, Stanford, to conduct the first performance of the deftly assured Variations on a Chinese Theme (the same tune crops up in the ‘Turandot Scherzo’ of Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphoses). The following year came The Eternal Rhythm, a headily opulent if rather sprawling tone-poem belatedly premiered under Goossens’s baton at a 1920 Queen’s Hall Prom. The eight deliciously sophisticated miniatures that comprise Kaleidoscope (1933) stem from a set of 12 for piano dating from 1917.

Goossens didn’t live to hear the three-movement Divertissement (his last completed opus, written between 1956 and 1960): its central ‘Scherzo and Folk Tune’ is a skilful reworking of two earlier piano studies, and the ‘Ballet Flamenco’ finale nods appreciatively towards Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole as well as ‘Valencia’ from Ibert’s Escales. Again, performance (this time with the Melbourne SO) and engineering bring precious little cause for complaint.

In sum, a hugely enterprising, frequently engrossing survey; collectors with a taste for adventure should most definitely lend an ear.