While things may have moved on after modernism, writing absolute music as anti-progressive and non-ironic as this still takes guts. Vienna-based Johanna Doderer (b1969) comes from a family of architects and writers and is not without big-name supporters: Patricia Kopatchinskaja was the recipient of a previous violin concerto. I can only report that I found this one, derived from a pre-existing dance piece, oddly shallow, like one of those interminable film scores that never actually gets anywhere but doesn’t need to because the real development is going on in front of the camera. All that’s foregrounded here is a skein of figuration thinly disguising shards of Arvo Pärt and Stravinsky’s Orpheus.

Even more like a cinematic accessory is the Second Symphony, inspired by Slovenia’s beautiful Lake Bohinj, which the booklet-note contrives to portray as some kind of Balkan backwater. It’s not all idyllic travelogue, as Doderer is concerned to document the region’s travails in the First World War. Then again, there’s something disingenuous about that too. No mention of the former Gestapo headquarters at one end of the lake, let alone Marshal Tito’s field hospital not far away in the hills. Perhaps something has been lost in translation. My doubts about the whole project were confirmed by the photographs of the composer herself slumped Ophelia-like in its waters. If this music is Mahlerian in scale, its vibe is recycled Soviet Baltic. With Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony already in the frame, the arrival of Anne Schwanewilms momentarily thrusts us into sorrowful Górecki-land.

To end on a more positive note, both scores are remarkably well played and recorded. The symphony had not been aired prior to these sessions yet Ariane Matiakh secures much more than a dutiful run-through. I just wish the music had more substance and staying power.