Heinz Holliger brings an infallible ear for timbre to bear on this programme of Debussy, notably, but by no means exclusively, in three works featuring solo wind instruments. In the Première Rapsodie, with Dirk Altmann as a wonderfully liquid, expressively malleable clarinet soloist, the textures that Holliger coaxes from the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra are both luminous and finely detailed, creating a context that seems to cosset the clarinet line while at the same time allowing it to blossom. The haunting mystery at the start of the Rapsodie for saxophone and orchestra is similarly evoked to telling effect, with Daniel Gauthier’s warm, cushioned but limpid saxophone tone emerging from the mists and floating weightlessly above and through the orchestral fabric. The flautist Tatjana Ruhland is also rightly credited for her solo in Prélude à L’après-midi d’un faune, the work that truly established Debussy’s individuality in 1894, here shaped with sensuous beauty and an artless sense of its emotional rise and fall.

The range of sonority and mix of colours that Holliger draws from the Stuttgart orchestra is an especially attractive feature of this disc and is just as evident in the ‘Rondes de printemps’, ‘Gigues’ and ‘Ibéria’ of Images, which are performed here in that order rather than in the different permutations sometimes favoured by other conductors. Coupled with Holliger’s instinctive feel for the music’s natural pace and contour, these are captivating performances.