Thomas Rösner’s new recording with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra presents two works each by a pair of 20th-century French composers whose posthumous reputations continue to grow. The earliest of these are Charles Koechlin’s symphonic poems Towards the Vault of the Stars and On the Distant Waves. Both date from 1933, though neither was performed or published until decades after the composer’s death. Francis Poulenc is represented by two post war works: Sinfonietta, commissioned by the BBC and premiered by the Philharmonia Orchestra in October 1948, and the Piano Concerto, composed for the Boston Symphony and premiered there by Poulenc and Munch in 1950.

Artur Pizarro is the soloist in Poulenc’s Piano Concerto, a work that offers little in the sort of conventional virtuoso display that has made both the Organ Concerto and the Concerto for Two Pianos so enduringly popular. Pizarro seems delighted to meet the score on its own terms, turning in a performance of considerable sensitivity and subtlety. Together with Rösner and the Bambergers, he achieves a genuine expressive symbiosis punctuated with disarming earnestness in the opening Allegretto. The Andante’s ethereal delicacy is at once alluring and the perfect set up for the piquant, bumptious Rondeau à la française.

The Sinfonietta, Poulenc’s largest purely orchestral work, is the antithesis of the understated concerto. The wind and brass choirs have ample opportunity to strut their stuff and do so with distinction. The whole orchestra acquits itself magnificently in terms of speed, agility and beautifully blended ensemble. Rösner’s focus on the phrase is inerrant and the musicians respond with gorgeously contoured shapes that never miss their mark.

The qualities of ensemble that conjure Poulenc’s bright palette are equally successful in the more diffuse, shaded sonorities of Koechlin. Despite pleasurable immersion in these foggy textures, with Rösner as guide, we never lose our way. It’s a pleasure to hear the orchestra sounding so fine.