This welcome release should do much to restore Peeters’s reputation as one of the most craftsmanlike and consistently satisfying organist-composers of the past century. As a star pupil of the Lemmens Institute in Mechelen, Peeters drew inspiration in equal measure from the rich French tradition of Widor, Guilmant and Tournemire, the treasures of his own Flemish Renaissance polyphonic heritage and, increasingly, as he toured extensively after the Second World War, his own responses to landscape. The Lied to the Flowers, for example, was sketched in California, an experience not dissimilar to Messiaen’s encounter with Bryce Canyon in Utah.

Although it must be a daunting challenge to reduce Peeters’s vast organ output down to a 75 minute representative selection, Trinkwon has managed successfully to cover most angles, from two of the most memorable and harmonically delicious choral preludes (out of 300 plus) to the mighty Concert Piece (a partial reworking of the 1944 Organ Concerto). The early Variations and Finale on an Old Flemish Song owe a good deal to Dupré’s example. A delightful contrast is the Suite modale (1938), the sparkling Scherzo from which shows how deft and entertaining Peeters could be. The Elégie (on the death of Peeters’s mother) is given an especially moving performance. The only disappointing track is the famous Aria, which comes over in a curiously jerky and disconnected manner.

That apart, the playing is mostly top-notch, with the Tonbridge Marcussen ideally suited to Peeters’s clear countrapuntal voice-leading. Beautifully recorded, with excellent notes by David Gammie.