Howard Shelley, BBC Philharmonic, Martyn Brabbins - Orchestral Works, Volume 2 (2006)

Cyril Scott was born in 1879, the same year as Ireland and Bridge, and with CDs like this he can be heard alongside their contributions in both piano and orchestral music. The First Piano Concerto (the Second is on a previous Chandos CD) was premiered by the composer under Beecham in 1915, by which time Scott's reputation in Germany had taken a terminal blow. Lewis Foreman, in the CD booklet, remembers seeing Scott at his 90th birthday concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1969 when Moura Lympany played the concerto. Reviews were generally condescending – and wrong. This is a wonderfully inventive work, completely imagined in every detail: the core of this music, like that of Delius, is the present sensual moment. If the actual sound is seductive enough it satisfies the ear. Both Scott and Delius, like Messiaen, were fixated on chords decked in luxuriant orchestral textures.
The extraordinary thing about this CD is that both Early One Morning (1931) and the Fourth Symphony (1952) are not just first recordings but first performances, too. Scott, neglected to the point of ostracism, continued to compose when anyone else would have succumbed with clinical depression long before. As his psychic writings show, he was supported by higher powers.
The symphony, however courageous, is not as original as either of the piano concertos and the exuberant finale falls somewhere between Debussy's La mer and Ravel's Daphnis.