In the UK, ITV recently broadcast a series called Britain’s got Talent. The series was nothing special, but it did throw up an unusual winner for such shows : an amateur opera singer.

Paul Potts, age 36, a mobile phone salesman from Port Talbot in South Wales (where else for an opera singer?), inevitably clinched his victory with a spirited performance of Puccini’s Nessun Dorma.

But how good is he? That’s not so easy to judge.

As is normal for such shows, the audience was encouraged to applaude every high note and familiar phrase. The judging panel comprised the usual suspects of light-entertainment producers, a former tabloid editor and an actress. The singer was also helped by amplification in the studio, so the strength of his voice was not tested. It’s possible that at Covent Garden or La Scala, he wouldn’t be heard at the back of the auditorium.

His voice reminded me of a young Harry Seccombe, a much-loved Welsh comedian who sang a bit of the heavy stuff.

Not surprisingly, Paul Potts first sang opera at the age of 28 for a karaoke competition where he dressed up as Pavarotti.

ITV says, “He went on to perform in Barrymore’s My Kind Of Music (1999). The money he won from the show (£8000) along with his savings was spent on attending various training courses in Italy. From his Italian opera class he was selected to sing in a master class for Pavarotti and Katia Ricciarelli – who he says were very impressed. Paul reckons he’s spent £20,000 in total to get to where he is today.”

Paul has performed in four semi professional operas in the UK and some concerts. His proudest performance was with the Philharmonic Orchestra in a concert in front of 15,000 people.

A motorcycle accident is reckoned to have held him back from reaching his full potential.

Two weeks ago, the Royal Albert Hall in London saw the musical resurrection. of John Foulds’s A World Requiem to mark Remembrance Sunday. The once popular piece had not been performed for 81 years.

It was composed in the aftermath of the Great War (1914-1918) to commemorate the dead of all nations and was given a warm reception at the time.

For four years in succession, from 1923 to 1926, the Requiem was the centrepiece of the Armistice Day Festival, which in those days brought Britain to a standstill every 11 November.

The Requiem needed 1,250 musicians to perform such was the scale of the work.

Then the Requiem was dropped. So too was the composer, who never heard his piece played again. Foulds died of cholera 13 years later while living in self-imposed exile in India. His pacifist views were shunned by polite society and his work quickly forgotten.

John Foulds was born in Manchester in 1880, the son of a bassoonist in the Halle Orchestra. He played as a cellist in promenade and theatre bands before joining the Halle cellos in 1900.

He had been composing since childhood. During his years as a cellist in the Halle at the beginning of the 20th century he wrote piano music, string quartets, symphonic poems and a vast 3-part concert opera for soloists, chorus and orchestra called The Vision of Dante, based on The Divine Comedy. Only a few of them were ever performed.

However, the conductor Hans Richter gave him conducting experience. Although Henry Wood presented some of Foulds’s early orchestral compositions at the Queen’s Hall Proms, he became best-known as a successful composer of light-music, such as the once-famous Keltic Lament (1911).

He is indeed a forgotten composer, who didn’t fit in with the zeitgeist of post-war Britain. The resurrection of his Requiem is a useful addition to the repertoire.

There are not many new recordings around to mark the 150th anniversary year of arguably England’s greatest — certainly most loved — composer. Many are reissues, but none the worse for that.

Natalie Clein’s new version of Elgar’s Cello Concerto has been compared with the superb Jacqueline Du Pre’s epic effort made against a background of coughing from the audience. It is, however, far less affecting in its impact, though finely wrought and executed. It’s unlikely to knock the Du Pre off its perch at Classic FM, though.

Here then is a short list of some of the new issues worth buying :

Natalie Clein’s version of the Cello Concerto with the Liverpool Philharmonic conducted by Vernon Handley (EMI).

EMI’s magnificent The Collector’s Edition (30 CDs for under 40 quid [$80] ) mainly containing the Sir John Barbirolli versions, but not exclusively. Bargain

Nigel Kennedy plays the Violin Concerto in two brilliant versions. The first is from 1984 with Tom Handley and is issued on EMI’s Great Recordings of the Century. Kennedy has always loved a soupy tune, so is particularly attuned to Elgar’s music. The second is the much-treasured version with Simon Rattle and the CBSO in 1997 on the EMI bargain label.

There’s also the dazzling playing of Itzhak Perlman in the Violin Concerto with the Chicago Symphony from 1981. Conducted by Daniel Barenboim, it’s generally regarded as slighter than the Kennedy versions. (DG Original).

There are more, but these are probably the pick, with The Collector’s Edition taking pride of place as the Christmas gift of the century.

Frank Bridge (1879-1941) is not much heard of nowadays. He was born in Brighton of a working-class family and studied at the Royal College of Music in London from 1899 to 1903 under Charles Villiers Stanford and others.

Despite his “revolutionary” ideas, his composing career never took off. He later found success as a conductor.

Bridge’s pacifism didn’t go down well in World War I and his greatest solace came from the landscapes of the South Downs in Sussex. His biographer, Rob Barnett said, “Such was the spell cast by … the Downs and the seascape, that he was moved to write a musical nature poem, Enter Spring, which was his masterpiece.

Frank Bridge played the viola in a number of string quartets, most notably the English String Quartet, and conducted, sometimes deputising for Henry Wood, before devoting himself to composition, receiving the patronage of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. He privately tutored a number of pupils, most famously Benjamin Britten, who later championed his teacher’s music and paid homage to him in the Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (1937), based on a theme from the second of Bridge’s Three Idylls for String Quartet (1906). Bridge died in Eastbourne.

Among Bridge’s works are the orchestral The Sea (1911), Oration (1930) for cello and orchestra and the opera The Christmas Rose (premiered 1932), but he is perhaps most highly regarded today for his chamber music. His early works are in a late-Romantic idiom, but later pieces such as the third (1926) and fourth (1937) string quartets are harmonically advanced and very distinctive, showing the influence of the Second Viennese School.