Hendrik Andriessen (father of the better-known Louis) is a natural target for the attentions of CPO and the excellent Netherlands Symphony Orchestra under David Porcelijn as part of their survey of Dutch orchestral music. A considerable force in his country’s music for much of his long life (1892-1981) as composer, performer, musicologist and administrator, Andriessen is now remembered chiefly for his organ music. But there are also four symphonies, which occasionally find their way into the recording catalogues (Nos 2 and 3 on Donemus, No 4 on Olympia).

The Second Symphony (1937) is virtually a manifesto for neo-classical modesty – its three movements add up to less than 19 minutes. The music seems constantly on the brink of serious issues but then somehow compulsively shies away from them. Similarly the Ricercare of 1949, emblematically based on the BACH motif, impresses by its ingenuity and crams a lot of contrapuntal invention into its 10-minute span but at the cost of a certain short-windedness. Mascherata, composed for the Concertgebouw 25 years further after the Symphony, stays broadly faithful to the same aesthetic. Its four movements are designed as dialogues with characters from the commedia dell’arte. But that’s not to say that they are in any way flippant or inconsequential. If anything they are more developed, and darker in tone, than their counterparts in the Symphony. Finally, Wilhelmus van Nassouwe (1950-51) is a rhapsody on the Dutch national anthem, but more wiry and tough-minded than that description might suggest.

Andriessen’s clean-cut lines, resourceful, often polytonal harmonies and succinct mode of expression are undoubtedly appealing and worthy of admiration. Place the Symphony stylistically in a triangle between Roussel, Martin≤ and Vaughan Williams’s Fourth, and you wouldn’t be far wrong. But look for comparable urgency and individuality, and you may be a little disappointed. Still, recording and documentation are all first-rate, and I for one look forwards to a recording of the superbly lean and energetic Fourth Symphony from this source.