Vaughan Williams’s 1942 score for the wartime propaganda film Flemish Farm was the fourth of 11 big-screen commissions he undertook between 1941 and 1958. He compiled this enjoyable seven-movement suite for a 1945 Prom and it serves up rich pickings, including plentiful echoes of the Fifth and Sixth symphonies.

Written in 1946, VW’s score for The Loves of Joanna Godden (set in and around Romney Marsh and Dungeness) consisted of music for 25 episodes, 10 of which were extracted with the composer’s approval for a 1948 recording. That selection has in turn been reconstructed and expanded by Stephen Hogger into an evocative 15-minute sequence, the icy chill that descends from 5'20" (complete with wordless female chorus) foreshadowing VW’s next film score, Scott of the Antarctic.

Bitter Springs (1950) also hailed from Ealing Studios. From a mere 38 bars of material penned by VW, music director Ernest Irving (dedicatee-to-be of the Sinfonia antartica) fashioned nine numbers, a further seven being of his own devising. Grateful as the composer was to Irving for the ‘marvels you have done with my silly tune’, the quality of inspiration is less consistent here, though in the swaggering main title there’s a lyrical idea which intriguingly anticipates the flowing viola melody that ushers in the second half of the Ninth Symphony’s finale (beam to 1'52" on track 9 to hear what I mean).

As on previous instalments these are handsomely groomed performances from the BBC Philharmonic under Rumon Gamba in superbly natural and vivid sound. Michael Kennedy’s notes carry the requisite authority. All in all, a CD well worth snapping up by VW fans and film-music buffs alike.