Catalan composer Roberto Gerhard (1896-1970) – a student of Granados, Pedrell and Schoenberg – left Spain after the civil war and eventually settled in Cambridge. These three works all come from the 1940s and display a distinct Spanish accent. Alegrías (1942 43) is a flamenco-inspired suite of four movements. The music struts seductively, particularly the ‘Farruca’ movement, where Gerhard conjures the dramatic poses and aggressive footwork of this popular dance.

Pedrelliana was originally the finale of a symphony written in 1941 as a homage to his teacher Felipe Pedrell and revised as a stand-alone piece in 1954. The entire symphony is fascinating – there’s a terrific recording of it by Matthias Bamert and the BBC SO (Chandos, 12/98) – particularly the passages that reflect the unexpected influence of Sibelius. Listen here at 1'48", for instance, where an oboe sings over shivering strings.

Don Quixote had an even more complicated gestation, as Paul Griffiths explains in his exceptionally informative booklet note. Gerhard began work on the ballet in 1939, intending it to be performed by a touring troupe with a small orchestra, then the war intervened and he salvaged parts of the score for a symphonic suite (1941). A few years later, he adapted the music for a radio serial, and the final version heard here was composed for the Royal Opera House. Its 1950 premiere featured choreography by Ninette de Valois, with Robert Helpmann in the title role and Margot Fonteyn as Dulcinea.

The ballet is constructed in three scenes with interludes and an epilogue, and despite frequent splashes of colour, the music sometimes takes on a bleak atmosphere that reminds me of Bartók and also Britten’s music of the time (Grimes, Lucretia, Albert Herring). A good example of this can be heard in the brief introduction and opening of the first scene (Quixote’s room). Gerhard can be wonderfully imaginative in his visual evocations, as in the way he illustrates the spinning windmills with slow-turning figures in the piccolo and horn. Perhaps the most attractive section is the ‘Chacona de Palacio’ depicting the Cave of Montesinos (scene 4), whose flamenco rhythms would fit right into Alegrías.

Juanjo Mena and the BBC Philharmonic play all three works with feeling and flair. Mena’s conception of Don Quixote is a shade darker than Victor Pablo Pérez and the Tenerife SO’s (Auvidis, 10/92) but equally eloquent, and Chandos’s engineering is both clear and atmospheric.