More Boult treasures from the radio archives, the pick of the present generous collection comprising his thrillingly powerful traversal with the BBC SO from the 1973 Proms of Holst’s The Planets. With Boult at the helm of the orchestra he founded, it’s a performance of towering authority, magnificently paced and totally gripping from first measure to last; indeed, I was irresistibly put in mind of this same team’s legendary and incandescent January 1945 recording for HMV (the first of Boult’s five of this work). Highlights include a hair-raising ‘Mars’ (how masterfully Boult ratchets up the tension from fig 6 or 3'13"), his ideally flowing tempo for the big tune in ‘Jupiter’ and a memorably remorseless ‘Saturn’, which rises to as shattering a fff peak as you will ever hear. Moreover, there’s no missing the menace lurking behind the antics of ‘Uranus’ (which can boast a satisfying organ glissando to boot).

A terrific Planets, in sum, performed with infectious application and distilling a tangible sense of occasion throughout. Two additional Holst offerings – the evocative, questing Hammersmith and ebullient A Fugal Overture – and George Butterworth’s vernal The Banks of Green Willow valuably complement Boult’s much-loved versions on Lyrita, the wistful reading a reminder that the budding maestro was responsible for its premiere in his very first public engagement with a professional orchestra on February 27, 1914.

Disc 2 opens with a broadcast account of Vaughan Williams’s Sinfonia antartica from October 12, 1977, an occasion that not only marked the 105th anniversary of the composer’s birth but also proved to be Boult’s swansong on the concert platform. It’s a characteristically lucid display, which won the approbation of Anthony Payne writing in The Daily Telegraph: ‘a quite magnificent interpretation in which the BBC Symphony Orchestra played superbly … This performance proved once again how unprogrammatic the symphony really is and despite sectional forms and picturesque textures how organic as pure music and emotional experience.’

Last comes Walton’s Symphony No 1 from a December 1975 concert at the RFH. Boult certainly has this imposing score’s architectural measure (both outer movements receive cogent advocacy) but tends to fight shy of its white-hot intensity: the Scherzo’s prescribed malizia barely registers, and, even more so than on his August 1956 commercial recording for Nixa, he fairly zips through the ensuing Andante con malinconia. Interesting to learn that Boult turned down the chance to conduct the work again at the following year’s Proms (‘somehow I couldn’t face all that malice a second time and said so’).

Tastefully refurbished by transfer engineer Paul Baily and expertly annotated by Martin Cotton, it adds up an enticing package – unmissable, I’d say, for the contents of disc 1 alone.