Few English composers have been the subject of such consistent condescension as Birmingham-born Albert W Ketèlbey. You won’t catch a Rattle or Elder sullying their CVs with such lowbrow effusions – and certainly not the (now all-inclusive) BBC Proms, which has included precisely two works by Ketèlbey in its entire history: The Throne in 1907 and In a Monastery Garden in 2009. This new album of his music makes you wonder why he has been so marginalised by the musical establishment of his native land, because several pieces here, were they ascribed to, say, Grieg, a composer whose Lyric Pieces and incidental theatre music are very much in the same idiom, would ensure they were played more widely and accepted for what they are: endearing, colourfully orchestrated examples of English light music. As ‘Peppering’ wrote in these pages back in July 1928, welcoming a new album of eight 12-inch Columbia discs conducted by the composer: ‘In Mr Ketèlbey’s world of successful make-believe there is room for everyone except the musical pedants and snobs.’

All three movements of In Holiday Mood (1938), which opens proceedings, might easily be mistaken for Eric Coates. This is the suite’s first digital recording, as is also the case for nine other titles. My Lady Brocade is a premiere recording while From a Japanese Screen and A Birthday Greeting have not been heard complete before in their original orchestrations. For these, we must thank the indefatigable champion of so much forgotten, overlooked British music, conductor Martin Yates, and Tom McCanna, who not only supplied the scores but has written the excellent booklet (which includes Ketèlbey’s own notes on his music).

The BBC Concert Orchestra have this idiom in their blood. I can’t think of another outfit that ‘gets it’ quite as well and so convincingly, whether in the exuberant opening ‘On the Promenade’, the Debussy-esque ‘A Passing Storm-Cloud on a Summer Day’ (from Three Fanciful Etchings), A Mayfair Cinderella (instantly conjuring a vision of some 1930s costume romance starring Greer Garson or Ronald Colman), the high-spirited A Japanese Carnival (1927, great fun) and Mind the Slide! (Ketèlbey’s humorous 1915 excursion into ragtime). Everything is done with such irresistible and stylish panache that even when Ketèlbey’s inspiration flags (as it does in maybe a handful of the 18 tracks) Yates covers up the cracks, as it were, and maintains one’s interest. Several titles have not seen the light of day on disc since Ketèlbey himself recorded them in the 1920s. The acoustic ones I’ve always found very difficult to listen to – not here, in this beautifully recorded resurrection.