This is the third in a series of Chandos recordings with these artists, collating various orchestral overtures from the pens of British composers. They may be overtures to operas or plays, but most are one-off concert pieces. The previous two volumes, both highly successful, cherry-picked the late-19th and early-20th centuries for their material. The music on this new issue is later, all taken from a 12-year period in the mid-20th century: 1938 to 1949. 

While the bulk of the previous programs contained music that had fallen out of the repertoire, and was therefore unfamiliar to us today, by and large the works here are better known – at least to collectors.

Several have enjoyed previous recordings. These are: Havergal Brian: The Tinker’s Wedding (1948); Geoffrey Bush: Yorick (1949); Alan Rawsthorne: Street Corner (1944); Frank Bridge: Rebus (1940); Richard Arnell: The New Age (1939); Benjamin Britten: Overture to Paul Bunyan (1941). Others, with older recordings I can’t trace, are Clifton...