Mischa Spoliansky is hardly a household name but this Russian-born composer, domiciled in London, was versatile and highly accomplished, able to turn his hand to any film subject and bring to it an authentic ring. The films featured here cover nearly a quarter of a century of his output, opening with North West Frontier, a big box office success for Rank in 1959 that starred Kenneth More and Lauren Bacall in an action yarn set in that all-too-familiar trouble spot on the Indian border. The arresting Main Titles pitch the listener into the turbulent era of the British Raj who lord it over the indigenous Muslim people. “Attack on a Train” whips up the tension between them but it’s clear enough from the final cue, “Eton Boating Song”, set as a spirited march, who gains the upper hand. “Scott and Mrs Wyatt” portrays the growing respect between the lead characters, the romantic refrain glowing brighter on each reprise.

In Sanders of the River (1935), bass Mark Coles offers a relaxed account of three songs Spoliansky originally composed for Paul Robeson. Coles also sings two numbers written for Robeson in the Suite from King Solomon’s Mines (1937) where the songs are strongly characterised and idiomatically put across, and are prefigured or echoed in the surrounding instrumental cues in one of Philip Lane’s happiest arrangements. Spoliansky brings an appropriately sprightly touch to The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936), a film that was dismissed as “without a spark of creative talent” by Graham Greene, then a film critic. Twenty-one years later, Greene wrote the screenplay for Preminger’s Saint Joan, which was poorly received; it features an organ Toccatina, well recorded on a Harris instrument in Cheltenham College Chapel. The style comes closer perhaps to Karg-Elert than the music one might expect to hear at the coronation of the Dauphin in Rouen Cathedral.

In The Ghost Goes West (1935), Spoliansky blends Scotch snap and folksong, evoking the ghost in an elegiac melody redolent of the ghost of Hamlet in Tchaikovsky’s fantasy-overture. The influence of Addinsell’s Warsaw Concerto trickles through Wanted for Murder and Idol of Paris, in which pianist Roderick Elms handles the unabashed romantic idiom with just the right touch of rubato. And who could resist Spoliansky’s infectious Galop from the farce The Happiest Days of Your Life, played with such verve by Gamba and the BBC Concert Orchestra? Like its predecessors in this series, this is a state-of-the-art recording of a thoroughly enjoyable selection of film music notable for its diversity and arrangements. It’s a must for all collectors on those counts and in bringing to light such an engaging talent.