Lord Berners excelled in the ballet medium where he enjoyed collaborations with leading choreographers and conductors with whom his natural flair for spectacle and design could be explored to the full. In 1946 he wrote Les Sirènes, set on a French beach in 1904 with an exotic cast – the music is atmospheric, graceful and full of allusions to other composers. Cupid and Psyche was not a critical success but its music transcended weaknesses in the scenario and the suite is both orchestrally deft and thematically memorable.

This disc originally appeared on Marco Polo 8223780 from 1995. Gramophone commented: ‘both these ballets, as one might expect, make a genuinely aristocratic contribution to British Light Music in these sympathetic performances.’

Conductor David Lloyd-Jones is a leading interpreter of major British orchestral music. His recording with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra of the seven symphonies by Arnold Bax won a Gramophone Award. He has also recorded works by William Alwyn and Alan Rawsthorne and the seven symphonies of Charles Villiers Stanford.

Berners’s The Triumph of Neptune is available on 8555222: ‘David Lloyd-Jones has this music under his skin, and his penchant for detail and colour is consistently on display. Indeed, his forces respond with hugely committed performances full of gusto and bouncy swagger that make Berners’ works as accessible as possible to new listeners’ (Classical Music Daily).