Tony-nominated, Olivier-winning Adrian Sutton (b1967, Kent) is celebrated in the theatre world for his scores, the best-known of which are probably those for the National Theatre’s War Horse (2007) and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2012). This collection begins with his Violin Concerto, premiered last year by the artist for whom it was written, Fenella Humphreys. The booklet (excellent, by Jonathan James) tells us that its inspiration came from an invitation to write a companion piece for Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending and as a complement to Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull. What the booklet does not tell us is that the concerto was propelled into existence after Sutton had been given the devastating news that he has incurable cancer, and was written, remarkably, during a gruelling course of chemotherapy. The work’s three through-composed movements (25'15" in all) betray nothing of this. Nor do you need to know the narrative that informs the soaring, searing, passionately lyrical writing – thermals, the crashing ocean, cliff tops, high-circling gulls – to appreciate this consoling and uplifting work. Walton, Bax and Finzi are listed as influences on Sutton, yes, but also surely Korngold. And if you like Erich Wolfgang’s Concerto you’ll like this one, especially with the magic bow of Fenella Humphreys.

The remainder of the disc is devoted to purely orchestral works where the composer’s eclectic style is given free rein in Short Story (2022) and the inventive 10-plus minutes of A Fist Full of Fives (five themes, chamber quintet, leaping fifths, etc) from 2016. Many will be thrilled to have an account of the music for War Horse, Michael Morpurgo’s classic Great War tale and play, as heard in an updated version of the suite assembled as a concert work in 2016 narrated by the author and Joanna Lumley. Sutton’s masterly scoring and empathy for that peculiarly English pastoral idiom is played with obvious care and affection by the BBC Philharmonic. After the excitement of ‘The Charge’, you would be hard of heart not to be moved by the elegiac ‘Joey and Albert Reunited’ (superb writing for the strings and a nod to the solo clarinettist).

Five Theatre Miniatures close the programme with a quintet of nicely contrasted short pieces derived from Sutton’s stage work, including ‘The Departure’ (of an Orient Express) that can join the steam-train canon of Honegger, Villa-Lobos et al, a Handel pastiche (from the play of Coram Boy) and a concluding tarantella (‘Contagion’) written for Dr Semmelweiss in 2023.

With Chandos’s engineering and top-of-the-range presentation, this is altogether a great showcase for a remarkable talent, and living proof that serious, substantial music of the tonal and melodic variety can still (mirabile dictu) be found in an original and individual voice.