Howard Shelley has a strong feeling for the varieties and subtleties of Spohr’s symphonic style, and here continues his cycle of the 10 symphonies (Nos 1 and 2 recorded in 2006 – 10/07 – and Nos 4 and 5 in 2007) with two more works making different demands. No 3 was first performed in 1828, the year after Beethoven’s death, and the early reviews suggest relief that the German symphony had not died with him. The stormy opening Allegro bursts with energy and Shelley makes the most of a fine Larghetto (though one that is not free from cliché) and of a Scherzo with echoes of Mendelssohn as well as of Beethoven. Spohr’s finale is given its full strength with thematic material that receives imaginative handling.

This includes some excellent fugal writing, something which Mendelssohn respected in Spohr and which returns in the opening movement of the Sixth Symphony, of 1839. This is the strange “Historical Symphony” in which Spohr sought to invoke different historical periods. So we have a “1720” movement with Bach (the fugue) and Handel (a pastorale, as in Messiah), then a “1780” movement in which first Haydn and then Mozart are recomposed as if in the 19th century, to which suitably expanded scoring is further added for Beethoven in “1810” (though it is perhaps the earlier Eroica that most comes to mind). The finale, “1840” or “The very latest period”, runs riot among various composers, with strange French devices, mostly operatic. Shelley steers the necessary course between parody and genuine appreciation, and as a fill-up includes a first recording of the vigorous overture The Fall of Babylon.