More gaps in the Lambert discography are enterprisingly plugged by these sensitive and shapely performances, which display most agreeable dash and commitment. The Piano Concerto recorded here isn't that unnervingly bleak 1930-31 creation for soloist and nine players but one from 1924 that remained in short score, never to be heard in the composer's lifetime.
Now, thanks to the editorial skills of Giles Easter brook and the late Edward Shipley, we can at last savour another astonishingly mature and skilful product of Lambert's youth. Not only is the concerto tightly organised and brimful of striking invention, it also plumbs expressive depths, not least in the Andante slow movement which contains music as achingly poignant as any he penned. David Owen Norris does full justice to the glittering solo part, and he receives splendid support from Barry Wordsworth and the BBC Concert Orchestra.
Prize-Fight (Lambert's first ballet score) is earlier still, begun in 1923, completed the following year and overhauled one last time in 1927. It's a veritable romp, pungently scored in the manner of Satie and Milhaud, and with something of the anarchic spirit of Georges Auric's deliciously daft contributions to those glorious Ealing Comedies. In point of fact, Lambert had long been a connoisseur of the silver screen before he finally embarked on his first film score in 1940, for a flag-waving documentary entitled Merchant Seamen. Two years later, he compiled the present five-movement suite, and a superior specimen it is. Pomona we've had before. Wordsworth's spacious realisation occasionally lacks something in sheer effervescence and dry wit. But this is a most enjoyable and valuable compilation and the recording is vivid and truthfully balanced.