Imagine uprooting the traditional New Year’s Day concert from Vienna’s Musikverein and transporting it to the Opéra-Comique in Paris. And why not? After all, the popularity of viennoiserie began in Paris. This disc would possibly be the result – a celebration of French dance music from revues at the Folies-Bergère to ballets at the Opéra.

Whereas the Viennese have maintained their waltz tradition, France has rather neglected its dance music. I suspect only a few of the tracks here will be familiar – the exceptions being movements from Coppélia and Gounod’s ballet music to Faust, plus Waldteufel’s The Skaters’ Waltz and perhaps Ambroise Thomas’s once-popular overture to Raymond. Who better to lead the musical excavations than the indefatigable Palazzetto Bru Zane, dedicated to the rediscovery of neglected French music of the 19th century, and François-Xavier Roth?

With the ever-stylish Les Siècles, they have unearthed some real gems. The giddy waltz from Saint-Saëns’s Le timbre d’argent – missing from their Bru Zane recording of the complete opera (10/20) – is a joy, as is the waltz from Le chevalier Jean by Victorin Joncières. Ernest Guiraud, best known for composing the recitatives for Carmen and The Tales of Hoffmann, is represented by an excerpt from his one-act ballet Gretna-Green, with its hint of tartan.

I particularly enjoyed the two numbers by Hervé, pseudonym for the singer Louis-Auguste Florimond Ronger, who is credited with having created the genre of operetta. He moved to London for six years, where the two ballets represented here were premiered: Paris Exhibition (the Espagnoles et Séguedille played with Spanish verve) and Sports in England, from which we hear the queasy Valse du mal de mer (‘Seasickness Waltz’), which is very amusing.

Les Siècles and François-Xavier Roth simply sparkle in this music. There is plenty of lilt and lift to the airy waltzes, such as the charming Valse lente from Coppélia, which they performed at the BBC Proms in 2013. The absence of Offenbach may raise an eyebrow or two, although he does put in an appearance in Isaac Strauss’s Quadrille on Themes from ‘Orphée aux Enfers’. Strauss was born in Strasbourg – Berlioz called him ‘le Strauss de Paris’ – but there’s a bold Viennese swagger to his music. Honestly, you could put the score of his Hébé-Polka (or Waldteufel’s galop Grande vitesse, for that matter) in front of the Vienna Philharmonic on January 1 and the Musikverein audience would not be able to tell the difference from their usual musical fare!

Beautifully recorded and with Bru Zane’s customary excellent booklet notes, this is a disc to delight Francophiles, especially sweet-toothed ones like myself.