Composed in 1888 at the tail-end of Delius’s Leipzig sojourn, the tone-poem Hiawatha remained incomplete (the composer having excised two large chunks from the manuscript) and unheard until the Delius Trust invited Robert Threlfall to produce a performing version. It’s a charming discovery, its wholly disarming lyricism and fragrant poetry bringing irresistible echoes of the captivating Florida Suite completed the previous year. It’s also fascinating to encounter an idea (the oboe’s winsome second subject, conceivably representing Minnehaha) that Delius would later flesh out to even more potently expressive effect in his 1899 nocturne Paris. The BBC Concert Orchestra respond with commitment under David Lloyd-Jones’s alert lead.

Four concertante offerings make up the remainder. Both the Suite for violin and orchestra (dating from the same year as Hiawatha) and Légende (1895) will already be familiar to long-standing enthusiasts from Ralph Holmes’s pioneering recordings from 1984 with Vernon Handley and the RPO. These newcomers are less inclined to linger, but Graffin all but matches Holmes’s eloquence, even roughening up his tone a little in the second-movement Intermezzo (which here acquires a lusty, outdoor vigour). Lionel Tertis’s reworkings for viola suit the shadowy Caprice and Elegy (written in 1930 for Beatrice Harrison) more than the masterly Double Concerto (conceived, again, for Beatrice and her sister May), where, although Lloyd-Jones paces proceedings admirably, there’s rather less sense of soloistic interplay and fruitful dialogue than I would have liked; in other words, stick with the superb Little/Wallfisch/Mackerras account of the original.

Suffice to say, everything has been cleanly recorded by the Dutton production team, and Robert Threlfall supplies an exemplary booklet essay. A job very well done, then, and mandatory listening for devoted Delians.