John Foulds’s work divides sharply into two distinct halves. Mostly he is remembered for his light music but latterly his more ambitious works have been rediscovered. Ronald Corp, with the BBC Concert Orchestra in splendid form, offers 24 of the lighter pieces, making for delightful listening: this is a disc that has you attracted from one track to the next.

Foulds gathered some of his short pieces into suites which he called Music Pictures, two of which are represented here. Group VI, which opens the disc, brings three Gaelic melodies, all easily tuneful, leading to one of the most striking of all the items, Florida Spiritual, which includes a phrase that directly echoes one in Dvorák’s New World Symphony – apt enough when both composers were inspired by American sources. Group IV is influenced by painters: “At the Theatre” by Degas, “Evening in the Forest” by Farquharson and “Fiddler’s Fancy”, making a lively conclusion, by Morland. La belle Pierrette is a charming parody of French music-hall music, while Darby and Joan, an English idyll, features violin and cello solos, representing the two characters in love.

The three suites which round off the disc are equally colourful. The Indian Suite is based on Indian folksongs, with Foulds’s pentatonic accompaniments involving exotic percussion effects. The Suite française, the earliest work here, has rousing pieces first and last in the four-movement sequence, and a solemn “Hymne héroïque à la France” in the middle. Most interesting is the Henry VIII Suite, skilful pastiches of Elizabethan music drawn from the incidental music Foulds wrote in 1926 for a West End production of Shakespeare’s play. The original score was destroyed in the London blitz but this suite has survived, celebrating an extraordinary production starring Sybil Thorndike, with the lowly role of First Serving Man taken by the teenage Laurence Olivier. Corp inspires sparkling performances of this as of all the other items, in a clear, transparent recording.