‘Nobody cares what I have done; in Paris people think only of themselves and of the present…More and more I feel that I do not belong here.’ Théodore Gouvy (1819 98) yearned to be recognised in France. It was, spiritually speaking, his native country, but the region in which he was born had become part of Prussia after the defeats of Napoleon. He spent much of his time, and also absorbed most of his musical influences, in Germany, but even there he did not feel entirely at home. Gouvy, if disillusioned in his own time, would be delighted to be alive today to witness the resurgence of interest in his works, which number in excess of 160. Only last year CPO released some Gouvy symphonies; Toccata Classics brought out a CD of his chamber serenades; and the ensemble Voces Intimae revived the piano trios (all 8/13).

In reviewing those recordings I wrote that ‘as more and more Gouvy becomes known, we are unlikely to uncover a major innovator in Franco-German culture, but there is a lot to be said for music that simply appeals on its own terms through a sure compositional technique and vital creative spark’. That assertion calls for some tweaking in the light of this new release of three CDs contained within a handsome, informative book (in French and English) produced by the Palazzetto Bru Zane in Venice, which actively promotes the cause of neglected French Romantic music. Gouvy, even on the evidence of the wide range of works in various genres chosen for these three discs, was not a major innovator: I stand by that, since his indebtedness to Mendelssohn and Schumann is a consistent feature. He does possess a ‘sure compositional technique and vital creative spark’; but listening to his substantial concert overtures Le giaour (after Byron), Jeanne d’Arc and Le festival you are also struck by a significant dramatic stimulus. This might seem to go against Gouvy’s avowed aim to write ‘la musique sérieuse’ as opposed to programmatic music; but, as one of the essays in the book suggests, these works, classically proportioned, ‘exalt moral values, rather than attempting to use music as a means of relating historical or legendary deeds’. The dynamically discerning performances by the Orchestre National de Lorraine certainly give them a healthy impetus.

Two string quartets, while still indicative of Gouvy’s leanings towards the 19th-century German masters, are nevertheless sufficiently well defined in ideas and wrought with such discipline and spirit as to generate thoroughly involving performances by the Cambini and Parisii quartets. And the Fantaisie pastorale for violin and orchestra is a pure if manifestly Mendelssohnian delight. But perhaps the chief surprise is the rapt intensity of feeling, passionately projected here by the mezzo-soprano Clémentine Margaine, that Gouvy brings to La religieuse, a scène dramatique firmly in the French cantata tradition but shot through with an operatic fervour that lends it a powerful presence and gives a hint of where Gouvy’s true flashes of individuality might lie.