Many baby boomers who grew up with such Gilbert and Sullivan operetta faves as "Poor Little Buttercup" from "HMS Pinafore" and "Tit Willow" from "The Mikado" have never heard Sir Arthur Sullivan's music apart from the wondrously snarky lyrics of his collaborator, Sir William Gilbert.

Thanks to that incomparable impresario-cum-musical tour guide, Fred Flaxman, we can sample Sullivan's music by itself. Stories about Sullivan's fractious relations with his lyricist Gilbert strongly suggest that Sullivan considered himself more than a popular song writer. If we need evidence of his seriousness as a composer, Flaxman's hour-long piece provides it. Three of Sullivan's concert pieces point to the obvious fact that Sullivan's ambition soared as high as, say, Schubert's.

Listening to Sullivan's "Overture di Ballo," the world premiere of excerpts from his ballet, "L'Ile Enchante," and even his impressive "Cello Concerto," however, one is struck by the distinction between first-rate light classical music and music that goes absolutely off the scale, as, say, when Schubert's "Great C-Major Symphony" reaches passionately beyond anything we've ever listened to. Sullivan's music, unlike his contemporary British counterpart, Sir Edward Elgar, is better than A-OK. But it lacks the incredibly ghostly evocation of Elgar's Britannia discerned in his "Enigma Variations," not to mention his ever-popular, over-played graduation march, "Pomp and Circumstance."

No, in its predictable pyrotechnics and nineteenth-century period style, Sullivan's music is closer to Franz Lehar or even Johann Straus than Franz Schubert -- or Johannes Brahms. Sullivan without Gilbert is like waffles without maple syrup -- or love without sex! I for one rejoice in what must have been a mixed blessing for Sullivan: his collaboration with the redoubtable rhymester, who had high-minded poetic ambitions of his own, Sir William Gilbert. Only with his collaborative nemesis, Gilbert, did Sullivan's music rise on wings of song with stellar melodies and cataclysmic cadences -- as thunderous as Rossini's crescendos.

Flaxman's compilation of these three off-the-beaten-path Sullivan compositions comprises what I would call Sunday Afternoon Music, to be savored with gin and tonics and a game of whist.