The big news here – to me, at least, since I missed this same team’s Dutilleux disc (BIS, 1/16) – is the superb quality of the Loire Orchestra. In the measured opening of Dukas’s Polyeucte Overture, the strings’ suppleness and firm tone immediately immerse one in a darkly radiant (and distinctly Franckian) atmosphere, and in the ensuing Allegro, Pascal Rophé whips up a roiling tempest (echoes of Wagner’s Dutchman here) without any sacrifice in clarity. Indeed, even in the most rhythmically involved and intricately scored passages of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, every last detail is crystal clear – not surprising, perhaps, given that the conductor spent some of his early years working with Boulez and the Ensemble Intercontemporain. He keeps a tight grip on the tempo in the faster sections, lending a sense of inexorability and making sure every off-beat accent is where it’s supposed to be. Listen, say, to the crazily glittering swirls starting at 9'34", where instead of the usual wash of sound one really can hear every note – it’s exquisite.

The orchestra’s performance of Roussel’s ballet The Spider’s Feast is similarly pellucid, revealing all the wonderfully elaborate strands and layers of its piquant scoring. And Rophé is just as meticulous in delineating character as he is in clarifying texture, establishing a thick air of expectation for the hatching of the mayfly, for example, and drawing richly expressive playing from the orchestra when the mayfly expires. There’s abundant charm here, too, as in the graceful phrasing of the little waltz at 1'15" in track 11. Stéphane Denève’s Naxos recording (3/12) is similarly characterful, but to my ears, the Loire Orchestra outshine the RSNO, and BIS’s recorded sound is quite simply spectacular.