This most welcome second volume of British overtures serves to accentuate the sheer diversity of works this country produced in the genre between the 1890s and the 1940s and, moreover, where the lines of delineation between ‘serious’ and ‘light’ were blurred. Parry’s somewhat brooding Otello-inspired Overture to an Unwritten Tragedy (1893) looks to Brahms for studied motivic process, though much of the Schwung of Parry’s melodies and rich harmony is entirely his own. Gamba’s reading is a spacious one, perhaps a little too slow at the opening, but the variations in tempo he develops throughout the overture are nevertheless persuasive.

There is a distinctly nautical theme among the choice of 10 works. The earliest of these is Mackenzie’s quite masterly Britannia (1894), an orchestral tour de force of symphonically reworked themes. Ansell’s Plymouth Hoe and Smyth’s The Boatswain’s Mate (taken from her fourth opera), both attractive, melodious effusions, date from 1914, while Walton’s Portsmouth Point (1924 25) is a gutsy performance in which the composer’s characteristic rhythmic energy has a forceful élan. Bowen’s vivacious Fantasy Overture of 1945, a premiere recording, has a similar sense of dynamism and skilfully incorporates Dibdin’s famous ‘Tom Bowling’.

Quilter’s medley of children’s nursery rhymes in A Children’s Overture (1911 19) may be classed as ‘light’ music but its associations, sumptuous orchestration and subtle treatment have the power to conjure a bygone era of nostalgia and childhood innocence which has a genuine pathos. Eric Coates’s The Merrymakers (1923) surely contains one of his most stirring melodies. The sweeping second subject is irresistible, as is the brilliance of the orchestral texture (vigorously played here too). The short comedy overture Le Cabaret (1921, rev 1934) gives us a taste of John Foulds in the lighter vein for which he became well known (rather than the more experimental serious works which were less frequently performed) and it is good to have a new recording of Walter Leigh’s rousing ‘Jubilee Overture’ Agincourt (1935), which gives glimpses of the composer’s affinity for a Hindemith-inspired neo classicism which can be found in his other works. What other riches, one wonders, will inhabit Vol 3?