The BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Rumon Gamba give warm- hearted, energetic, well-paced accounts, and their oboist deserves a special accolade.

The two symphonies here testify to a strikingly original voice: the slow movements of each are especially interesting, owing as much to Shostakovich and Ravel respectively as to Gipps’s mentor Vaughan Williams. The cod-medievalism of Knight in Armour (premiered at the Last Night of the Proms in 1942, and studded with modal brass and shawm-like cor anglais solos) is great fun.

[Knight in Armour], and the single-movement Second Symphony, from 1945, are clearly both indebted to Gipps’s teacher Vaughan Williams, while the Fourth, from 1972, seems to belong securely and less distinctively in the mainstream of mid-century conservative British music.

As a calling card for Gipps’s talents, this disc couldn’t be bettered, Rumon Gamba’s well-drilled BBC National Orchestra of wales turning in performances of real polish. All handsomely recorded too.

In a programme of contrasting impressions and emotions, Symphonies Nos 2 and 4, the former inspired by the Second World War, offer an approachable tuneful idiom. They are complemented by the lyrical, shorter Song for Orchestra and the early tone poem Knight in Armour, premiered at the last Night of the Proms in 1942.