Time was that the fabled name of Jānis Ivanovs (1906 83) was uttered, if at all, only after slightly less legendary figures such as Havergal Brian, Nikolay Myaskovsky and the two Al(l)ans – Hovhaness and Pettersson – habitual symphonists with dozens of creations to their name, hardly any of which were available to hear. Over time, their symphonies have – with, I think, the exception only of Hovhaness – been recorded and their output come into sharper focus; except for Ivanovs.

With 21 completed symphonies, Ivanovs was neither the most prolific nor the least (Leif Segerstam has long since eclipsed all of them, albeit only numerically). All 21 have been recorded, issued by Campion Cameo (eg 9/99) or Marco Polo (2/97), but even with the advocacy of Vassily Sinaisky and Dmitry Yablonsky the works did not make a great impression. Time, then, for a reappraisal and modern recordings, which is what the Latvian label Skani began doing in 2015, releasing the epic, wartime Fifth (7/18) and the chamber-symphonic Fourteenth (1971) – twice, in different performances (LMIC035 and 068).

Lovers of late Romantic Russian and Soviet-era repertoire will readily warm to these works here even if Ivanovs’s style lacks the passion of Tchaikovsky or Shostakovich. There are curious stylistic resonances in both works of other composers – Leifs, of all people, in the heavy-footed Scherzo of No 15 (1972, curiously subtitled a ‘symphony of itself’), even Britten in some of the orchestral colouring, Einar Englund early in No 16 (1974), Daniel Jones later on – but these are fleeting. Both symphonies are lovingly rendered by the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra but I find the rhythmic element in both symphonies stodgy and earthbound, not mitigated by Guntis Kuzma’s over-reverential interpretations. Sinaisky certainly brought more excitement to this music even if he could not disguise its expressive limitations, but these newcomers win on performance and recording quality.