This collection confirms Bantock as a composer of real achievement whose music has been undeservedly neglected. He was a superb technician, and his impressively large-scale structures have a real urgency. Or perhaps we should say, a real enjoyment. Despite the potentially tragic undertones of Fifine at the Fair, both works are almost untroubled, filled instead with the geniality of a craftsman joyfully exercising a craft of which he's master. The cleverness of the thematic transformations can make you smile with pleasure once you've worked out what he's doing – and then smile again at the realisation that the result of the transformation isn't an arid piece of technique for technique's sake, but another jolly good tune.
And it's all very beautifully scored. He was a master of the orchestra. Can he be just a bit too clever, forever finding yet another ingenious and delightful thing to do with a scale-figure? Possibly, but he's never dull. Is real emotional depth lacking, despite hints of it whenever the wronged wife appears in Fifine? Maybe; possibly he was more given to enjoying than to pondering. The performances are stunning, the recordings most sumptuous. The two Heroic Ballads, for all that they're concerned with Cuchullan and his ilk, have not a shred of Irish Sea mist hanging around them: they're bold, colourful and stirring.