Leopold Stokowski thought so highly of William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony that he conducted the work’s premiere in 1934 with the Philadelphia Orchestra and recorded it in 1963 with the American Symphony Orchestra. But this marvellous piece – Dawson’s only symphony, alas – and the arresting scores by Ulysses Kay on this album are rarely performed, which can only be attributed to ignorance and prejudice.

The beauties of the Negro Folk Symphony, presented here in the composer’s 1952 revision, are bountiful, including the unusual structure (three movements, with varied architectures within each), subtle incorporation of folk melodies and Spirituals, and rhythmic inventiveness (especially the rambunctious figures redolent of African dance near the end of the first movement). Echoes of Dvořák can be discerned in the way Dawson weaves folk material seamlessly into his musical narratives, and also in the warmth and vibrancy of the orchestration. The movements have programmatic titles evoking African American experience, which the music portrays to powerful and expressive effect.

Like Dawson, who had a distinguished teaching career (at the Tuskegee Institute), Kay was an esteemed pedagogue (he was on the faculty at Lehman College of the City University of New York for two decades). The two Kay works offered here reveal a composer of consummate skill who melded lyrical and modernist techniques. The theme in his Fantasy Variations doesn’t appear until towards the end; the compelling sections that precede its full statement are replete with evolving activity and pungent harmonies. Umbrian Scene, though inspired by a happy trip to Italy, is dark, spare, even eerie – and utterly absorbing.

Arthur Fagen conducts each score with incisive authority, keeping the salient aspects in keen balance and drawing rich, animated playing from the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. It’s high time for American orchestras to programme these exceptional works.