Completed in 1890 and entitled Aan mijn vaderland (“To my country”), Zweers’s epic Third Symphony clocks in at just over an hour, its progress usefully waymarked by a motto theme heard at the outset. Both the first and third movements (“In the Dutch forests” and “On the beach and at sea”) are cast in fantasy form and frame a charmingly rumbustious Scherzo (“In the country”). Only with the finale (“To the capital”) does the danger of thumb-twiddling set in – even annotator Luc van Hasselt concedes this movement is not on the same level as the rest (and it’s been judiciously pruned for the recording). For the most part, though, Zweers’s ambitious magnum opus is worth sticking with for its gripping sense of scale, felicitous lyrical flow and some deft touches of scoring (I was frequently put in mind of Tchaikovsky, Dvorák and Glazunov).

Readers who enjoy venturing off the beaten track can rest assured that the late (and, to my mind, much underrated) Hans Vonk draws some consistently alert and nicely turned playing from his Hague orchestra (do check out, by the way, this same team’s really excellent exploration of Zweers’s countryman and contemporary Alphons Diepenbrock on a Chandos double-pack). Aside from a handful of minor blemishes (there are one or two drop-outs and audible tape-joins with which to contend), the agreeably airy 1977 analogue sound is fully acceptable. An enjoyable find.