As the D minor Symphony creeps into life and whispers its hints of those melodic fragments that are to blossom later on, Christian Arming and the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège establish a potent aura of mystique and expectation. Their approach to the slow movement is similarly alert to atmosphere, the instrumental sonorities mellifluously blended, the rhythmic perspective pliable but deftly under control. This is no grandstanding performance but rather one in which the spectrum of colour and expression is shrewdly explored so that the great burgeoning of Franck’s indelibly memorable tune in the finale emerges as a natural product of the preceding symphonic argument.

Composed a full four decades before the Symphony, Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne, predating by a couple of years Liszt’s symphonic poem on the same Victor Hugo theme, exposes the unfamiliar face of Franck as romantic dreamer. It is a sizeable piece, 25 minutes or so in length, and was written at the time of his blissful betrothal to his future wife, Félicité Saillot Desmousseaux. It might not be a patch on such mature symphonic poems as Le chasseur maudit or Les Eolides, and it lacks the Symphony’s formal discipline, but Franck’s response to the Hugo poem (helpfully printed in the booklet) reveals an imagination to match the images of vastness, meditation and the mix of awed emotions. The ballet excerpts from the opera Hulda, cut from the same harmonic and melodic fabric as the Symphony’s, are delicate divertissements, performed with finesse and spirit.