Symphony No. 1 / Concerto in D for string orchestra / Jabez and the Devil-Suite

"A great start to what must surely be a re-appraisal of Cooke's orchestral music. An opportunity for the vast majority of listeners to discover this composer's music for the first time"
(MusicWeb May 2007)

Writing in the journal Musical Opinion in 1936, Havergal Brian hailed Arnold Cooke as one of the most promising young British composers of his time - and this on the basis of a few early chamber and orchestral works and the cantata Holderneth (1934), all of them at that time unpublished. In the ensuing years Cooke amply fulfilled the promise that Brian saw in him.Yet he never sought the limelight: he went on to create a substantial body of dramatic, orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works whose quality is ever consistent and whose expressive impulses are almost always purely musical. Brian's comparison of Cooke with Brahms, which must have seemed odd in 1936, now appears a prescient insight into the essential nature of this dedicated and craftsmanly composer.