A few months ago I had the pleasure of reviewing Lyrita's reissue of John Foulds's Dynamic Triptych for piano and orchestra (coupled with Vaughan Williams's Piano Concerto, 3/93). Now, from the same company, we have a new disc entirely devoted to some of the composer's orchestral works, and a splendid addition to the catalogue it is too. Foulds is a somewhat elusive and fascinating figure of English music, and this well balanced survey of his music should do much to enlarge his popularity and win new friends.

Throughout most of his career he was principally known for his light music (the once popular Keltic Lament is one such example), and he also had to devote a large portion of his time to musical arrangements and unrewarding musical hack-work. Here, we are given the opportunity to explore some of his finest 'serious' works, which reveal Foulds as the innovator, mystic and, in the short Overture Le Cabaret, Op. 72a, entertainer. After the breezy, light-hearted merry-romp of Le Cabaret (originally part of his incidental music for Sacha Guitry's play Deburau, based on the life of the nineteenth-century French mime artist Jean-Gaspard Deburau), we come to one of his last surviving pieces for orchestra (many of his late compositions, composed in India where he died in 1939, remain lost), the ''Pasquinade Symphonique'' No. 2, Op. 98, which is here receiving its first ever recording. Foulds planned three works with this title, which would have eventually formed a suite, or Symphony in Pasquinade form. The first of these was subtitled the ''Classical'', the third, had he lived to complete it, would have been the ''Modernist'', and this one—the slow movement of the suite—is subtitled the ''Romantic''. The work has a striking, immediate appeal, despite the many influences that seem to tumble forth in quick succession (everything from Sibelius to Puccini). Michael Oliver, when reviewing Pearl's excellent recording of two of his string quartets (3/88), described him as ''garrulous, omnivorous magpie of a composer'', and it is true that by nature he was an insatiable eclectic. However, even when the influences seem to be at their most apparent, as in the highly Respighian April-England, the listener is always acutely aware of Foulds's own distinctive voice.

The remaining pieces on the disc reveal the mystical side of Foulds's creativity. The suite entitled Hellas, for double string orchestra, harp and percussion, dates from 1932, and is an arrangement of earlier piano pieces from 1910 and 1915. Although the suite is clearly an evocation of ancient Greece, the modal writing and scoring for strings also give it an unmistakable English feel. All but the last movement (''Corybantes'') are in slow, measured time and exert a hypnotic, compelling spell over the listener. The most substantial work on the disc, and possibly one of Foulds's most powerful and important creations, are the Three Mantras Op. 61b. These are the only surviving remnants from his aborted opera on Indian myths, Avatara, which he worked on for a period of ten years (1910-20) and which, as Malcolm MacDonald says in his excellent booklet-notes, remains shrouded in mystery. The outer Mantras (representing Action and Will respectively), both brimming with memorable ideas and invigorating rhythmic invention, are Foulds at his most dynamic, whilst the central Mantra (Bliss), an extended slow movement of some 13 minutes incorporating a wordless female choir, is a captivating and magical movement of great beauty.

Barry Wordsworth and the London Philharmonic respond to Foulds's music verve, commitment and enthusiasm, and the recording is of the highest Lyrita standard.

-- Michael Stewart, Gramophone [5/1993]