Scott returns from wilderness

Cyril Scott (1879-1970) was eccentric even by English standards, a composer who was best known in health food circles for the paeans he penned to cider vinegar and crude black molasses and who wrote most of his music influenced by his firmly held occultist philosophies.

For many decades, it appeared that Scott's music had been all but forgotten, once popular salon pieces such as Lotus Land yellowed beyond reclamation. A brave attempt in the 1970s to record his more substantial scores came to little.

The BBC Philharmonic is determined to redress the situation, taking time off from recordings of Balakirev, Bainton and Bax, to produce a Scott CD containing two major orchestral scores of the 30s and the composer's relatively late Second Piano Concerto.

Wielding the baton is the marvellous Martyn Brabbins, a specialist in the field, with CDs of many lost British composers to his credit.

Be prepared for aural splendours. Lavish is an understatement for Scott's Third Symphony, with its grand title of The Muses, a score written and orchestrated in a style that will please aficionados of scores from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

The finale, with its whirring wind machine and exotic Middle Eastern sway, makes one wonder how Ketelby might have fared had he ever come out of his Persian Market and tried a symphonic canvas.

Brabbins and the orchestra are unflinching in their commitment, with the Huddersfield Choral Society cascading in Ravelian descant for the finale.

The 25-minute symphonic poem Neptune (1935), a revision of an earlier piece concerning the Titanic disaster, is even more spectacular. Essentially programmatic, it teases us with fragments of shipboard music and all but shatters eardrums when ship and iceberg meet. Chandos have caught every thrill and chill, leaving James Horner's movie score firmly beached.

For Scott at his most adventurous, the Second Piano Concerto of 1958 is given a lithe, engaging performance by Howard Shelley, particularly welcome after the laboured account John Ogden and Bernard Herrmann recorded in the 70s for Lyrita.

Now it's just a matter of waiting for the much-anticipated Volume Two.

Cyril Scott, The Muses (Chandos CHAN 10211) available through Ode Records