On Wednesday, the Oscar-winning string arranger Anne Dudley will lead the BBC Concert Orchestra through a sweeping overture. The Royal Albert Hall audience, who have paid a bargain £90 for the Loggia seats and would, in an ideal world, be wearing full dinner dress, will listen rapt.

Then, as the strings rise to a crescendo, the orchestra and a small group of Sheffield dreamers, will explode into 35 minutes of the most exquisite pop created in the 80s.

Lost under a wave of Kajagoogoo and Spandau nostalgia, The Lexicon of Love, the multi-million selling 1982 debut album by ABC, which will be performed in full, is pop’s buried treasure.

It’s ten perfectly-formed tracks synthesised the bittersweet romanticism of the best Motown, watertight funk grooves and a sophisticated lyricism that owed more to Cole Porter than Mick Jagger’s gruntings.

The group, led by dapper Manchester exile Martin Fry, found a willing partner in producer Trevor Horn, who envisaged an new form of opulent pop, utilising the latest sampling technology, freed from the constraints of sweaty guitar solos.

Crucially, they didn’t forget the choruses. The singles Poison Arrow and The Look of Love became massive, radio-friendly hits. Dressed in an outrageous gold lame suit, Fry became a Top of the Pops regular, dangling wordgames such as “If I were to say to you can you keep a secret? Would you know just what to do Or where to keep it?”

“We had a vision of the future,” Fry recalled. “We were definitely trying to fuse two worlds - it was Chic meeting The Sex Pistols.” “It was like disco, but in a Bob Dylan way,” recalls Horn, who will introduce the performance next week, and went on to pursue his pop vision with Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

ABC’s sumptuous music and widescreen videos were also a calculated reaction against the grim recession Britain endured during Margaret Thatcher’s first term.

But rather than point the way to a glorious pop future, the album came to be seen as a beautiful folly. Trapped by their success, Fry flushed his lame jacket down a Tokyo hotel toilet. ABC “blew it” with a guitar rock follow-up Beauty Stab, eugh, although they continued to reinvent themselves.

The chart world ignored the band’s artful balance between style and content, tilting firmly towards the former. The good news for Lexicon obsessives however is that Fry is being measured for a fresh lame ensemble this very week.

ABC perform the The Lexicon of Love with the BBC Concert Orchestra - 8 April, Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, London

www.royalalberthall.com

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