Born in Kennington, south London, Henry Cotter Nixon (1842-1907) studied privately with Henry Smart, Charles Steggall and George Alexander Macfarren. During his twenties he was active as an organist, pianist, orchestral player and conductor, before settling in Hastings, where he established a music college and served for 12 years as chief of the local orchestra (which thrived under his stewardship).

The three works on this bold issue reveal a composer of no great stylistic originality but whose music nonetheless displays a lyrical fecundity, honesty of expression and no mean orchestral expertise that hold the attention – some feat given that the ambitious main offering here, the 1882 symphonic poem in five movements entitled Palamon and Arcite (based on John Dryden’s eponymous reimagining of ‘The Knight’s Tale’ from Chaucer), clocks in at just under 48 minutes! According to contemporary reports, it created quite a stir at its October 1888 premiere (the concluding tableau, ‘The Tournament’, had to be repeated), and would have been heard again before now but for the forced abandonment of a BBC radio recording in 1995. Anyway, it’s a most pleasing and diverting discovery, and shares the disc with the last of Nixon’s three concert overtures (a thoroughly likeable essay subtitled – we know not why – Jacta est alea or ‘The die is cast’) and an exceedingly pretty, distinctly Mendelssohnian Romance for violin and orchestra dating from around 1889 (Ana Török proves a tasteful soloist).

Suffice to say, Paul Mann directs all this material with watchful sensitivity and secures some commendably tidy playing from the Kodály Philharmonic (which is based in Debrecen, Hungary). The sound, too, is agreeably vivid and transparent to match. Anyone with an ounce of interest in Victorian musical life in Britain will, I fancy, want to check out this enjoyable anthology, the first of three volumes of Nixon’s orchestral music that we can expect from Martin Anderson’s ever-enterprising Toccata Classics label.