This is the fourth volume in Guild’s series devoted to (and my own first encounter with) the music of Lucerne-born Fritz Brun (1878-1959). The First of his 10 symphonies is a graduation work, completed in 1902 following four years of study at the Cologne Conservatory. That same year it was awarded the Paderewski Prize of Bonn’s Beethoven-Haus and premiered in Arnhem. Sporadic revivals followed in Brun’s homeland, not least under the baton of the Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck in February 1942, but only now is the work receiving its world-premiere recording.

It’s a big-hearted, bold offering in the Brahmsian mould, containing plenty which betokens both a budding imagination and no little sense of adventure, especially in the last two movements (which play without a break). There are also fleeting echoes of (among others) Dvořák, Nielsen, Rott, Busoni, Schmidt and d’Indy, whose Symphony on a French Mountain Air of 1886 coincidentally has an opening phrase very similar to that of Brun’s slow movement. The much later, initially very Beethovenian Overture zu einer Jubiläumsfeier (composed in May 1950 for the Silver Jubilee of Radio Berne) makes a diverting if not terribly generous filler – really good quiz material, though.

Adriano (who also provides meticulously detailed annotation) elicits a respectable enough response from his hard-working Moscow forces, though the rather unflattering sound does little to disguise some occasionally thick-set, ill-ventilated scoring in the early symphony. Still, an enjoyable and intriguing curio.