Chandos continues its most enjoyable film music series with a disc devoted to Sir Arthur Bliss, whose score for Things To Come (1934-5) was the first important contribution to cinema by an established composer. It remains one of the medium’s finest scores. Bliss’s screen work also embraced both more functional cinematic fare such as the weekly Pathe Pictorial newsreel (featured here a Welcome March marking the return of the Queen from a Commonwealth tour in 1954) and television documentary – represented on this disc by War in the Air and 1966’s The Royal Palaces Suite. In all this music, played with fervour and flair by the well-proven Rumon Gamba- BBC Philharmonic partnership, the vigour and vitality of the composer’s musical invention shines through.

If occasionally Bliss’s melodic line isn’t as overtly tuneful as that of his near contemporary Walton, his dazzling orchestration, dramatic and highly coloured sense of drama, and pungent rhythmic flair are uniquely his own. In these slighter pieces listen out for the unbuttoned start to Welcome the Queen and, at the other end of the scale, the piquantly scored wind interlude in the brief War in the Air. The picturesque tuneful waltz, ‘The Ballroom in Buckingham Palace’ from The Royal Palaces Suite, reminds us of the composer’s earlier credits for the ballet and Bliss, the conjurer of magical orchestral effects, runs through the spooky dark alleyways of Holyrood House, where Rizzio the confidante of Mary Queen of Scots was murdered, to evocative effect.

Things to Come, with its compelling warning for mankind’s future, has lost none of its power to enthrall. In an opening maestoso modal theme interrupted by call signs indicating an outside presence, Bliss powerfully captures the potent compound of HG Wells’s hopes and fears. ‘The Ballet for Children’, a gem of fleet-footed scoring and counterpoint with a trumpet tune foreshadowing to uncanny effect the one in Copland’s Billy The Kid, is followed by a series of bleak landscapes rent asunder by war-like noises. The optimistic note sounded in ‘Building of the New World’ is affirmed by the surging tune in the ‘Epilogue’. Congratulations are due to Philip Lane who arranged and reconstructed this concert music from the film, a story told in detail by Giles Easterbrook in his booklet-notes.

Given its first recording here, Caesar and Cleopatra was an unhappy experience for Bliss. He walked out on the project after meeting the Hungarian producer Gabriel Pascal, who by most accounts was as mad as a hatter, a fact recorded by Alan Jay Lerner during his acquisition of the musical rights to Pygmalion. At the time Bliss had completed over 80 pages of fully scored music including some enchanting, luminously conceived dance episodes. Studio 7 in New Broadcasting House, Manchester makes an ideal recording venue for this kind of music with a dry acoustic that is able to absorb the large battery of percussion evident in Things to Come, as well as offering an appropriately wide view of the sound stage.

GRAMOPHONE