The main interest here will naturally gravitate towards Elgar’s The Fringes of the Fleet, a morale-boosting entertainment scored for four baritones and orchestra initially comprising four settings of poems by Rudyard Kipling. So successful was the first run (under Elgar’s own supervision) at London’s Coliseum Theatre in June 1917 that the work was promptly recorded the following month, for which venture Elgar seized the opportunity to add an extra number, a setting of Gilbert Parker’s “Inside the Bar” for four unaccompanied baritones. The present revival is as overdue as it is welcome, revealing as it does a finely crafted sequence with more than its fair share of superior, disarmingly catchy inspiration (the opening “The Lowestoft Boat” is a memorably salty affair), as well as no mean imagination to boot (sample the ominous glide of “Submarines”). The admirable Roderick Williams is entrusted with the lion’s share of duties and he is ably abetted by his three vocal colleagues; the Guildford PO, too, is on its toes under Tom Higgins’s watchful lead.

Higgins is also responsible for four arrangements, three of which are effective orchestrations of songs by Edward German (“Big Steamers”) and John Ireland (“The Soldier” and “Blow out you bugles”). Suffice to report, Williams sings them beautifully. Elsewhere, the 50th anniverary of the death of Haydn Wood (1882-1959) is marked by the inclusion of his vivacious A Manx Overture (the Yorkshire-born composer was raised on the Isle of Man) and Elizabeth of England (a stately, flowing march); and there are two nautical offerings by John Ansell (1874-1948), namely the overtures Plymouth Hoe (once quite a popular item) and The Windjammer. Again, Higgins secures laudably chipper results from his spirited Guildford charges.

No undiscovered masterpieces, then, but an eye-catching and thoroughly diverting programme all the same, boasting pleasingly airy, eminently realistic sound.