For all his longevity and prolificacy, Florent Schmitt remains best remembered for a trilogy of pieces from the early 20th century: his suitably uninhibited setting of Psalm 47 (1906), his massive Piano Quintet (1908), which takes Franckian evolution to its logical extreme, and his ballet La tragédie de Salomé (1907). A noted influence on Stravinsky, the latter enjoys occasional revival in the suite extracted three years later, but the whole hour-long opus only became available in the CD era, this new account from Alpha being its third such outing.

As Catherine Lorent indicates in her informative note, Robert d’Humières’s synopsis was explicitly intended to counter the overt decadence of Strauss’s opera after Oscar Wilde’s play. Not that Schmitt’s music is without its sensationalist aspect, but this comes to the fore only gradually, a long Prelude setting the scene pensively, yet ominously, before the main action. Inevitably some of this is of more balletic than musical interest but not such as the opulent ‘Dance of the Peacock’, a likely influence on Vaughan Williams; insinuating ‘Dance of the Serpents’; or, above all, ‘Enchantments of the Sea’, in its pert synthesis of Debussy and Ravel. The angular ‘Dance of Steel’ sees steady accumulation of dramatic impetus which takes in the ‘Song of Aïça’ – its vocalise yearningly rendered by Ambur Braid – then the anxiety of ‘Danse blanche’ before a final build-up of tension finds its release in the ‘Dance of Dread’, whose febrile emotion makes for a determinedly baleful ending.

Alain Altinoglu is a persuasive guide and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony have its measure more fully than versions conducted by Patrick Davin or Julien Masmondet. The ruminative poise of Chant élégiaque (1903) is potently conveyed by Philipp Staemmler. Those wanting the suite should go for excellent accounts by Thierry Fischer (Hyperion, 7/07) or Yan Pascal Tortelier (Chandos, 9/11) but, for this score as Schmitt conceived it, Altinoglu is self-evidently the first choice.