Bantock: The Seal Woman album review – Celtic folk opera that never quite gets its head above water

Howard/Carby/Scottish Opera/Andrews

(Retrospect Opera, two CDs)

Granville Bantock’s story of a Selkie emerging from the sea is a century-old curio whose beauty has faded over the years

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xcept perhaps in Birmingham, where his memory is still cherished for what he did for the city’s music, including co-founding the CBSO, Granville Bantock (1868-1946) has slipped quietly into the margins of 20th-century British music. But as well as being an academic and conductor, Bantock was a prolific composer, with a work list including four symphonies, five concertos and nine operas, of which the last, the “Celtic folk opera” The Seal Woman, is easily the best remembered now.