With some composers who have not quite stood the test of time, it can often be the case that their music sounds imitative of, or at least strongly influenced by, the dominant figures of the day. Maurice Emmanuel (1862-1938) is different. He seems to have belonged to no particular camp other than his own. There is no hint in these works of the sway that, say, César Franck had over French music during the 19th century, nor any noticeable nod to the prominence of Debussy in the early 20th.

Such was Emmanuel’s originality that the earliest piece here, the Ouverture pour un conte gai of the 1880s, was condemned by the then professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, Léo Delibes. One of Emmanuel’s chief misdemeanours was perhaps that he had loosened himself from the grip of conventional harmony and had found a vocabulary of his own, drawn from the ancient Greek modes. As the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra shows, the Overture to a Merry Tale exudes a vivacious and perkily irreverent spirit. Alongside its modal colouring, the overture is also symptomatic of Emmanuel’s penchant for basing his works on some extra-musical idea: the First Symphony (1919) was triggered by the death of a young aviator during the First World War, the Second (1930‑31) inspired by the ancient Breton legend of le Roi d’Ys, a subject that spurs Emmanuel to use the folk-like material that also imbues the Suite française. All in all, the disc identifies a fascinatingly independent creative spirit.