This disc marks a double celebration: 40 years since the foundation of the Orchestre National de Lille and a half-century of the career of its founder, Jean-Claude Casadesus. The Heldenleben reveals Casadesus as a sensible, highly musical Straussian and shows an orchestra with some fine players. The brass sound, particularly the trombones, is pleasingly robust and forceful, especially in the opening section, and the principal horn is also outstanding, bringing a gorgeous, mellifluous tone to the final resigned duet with leader Fernand Iaciu’s solo violin – and Casadesus keeps the thread through the complex reminiscences of the final 10 minutes expertly too.

It’s a performance that would have been very satisfactory in concert in Lille’s Nouveau Siècle hall – where it was recorded in just one day five years ago – but, alas, doesn’t really cut it on disc. The engineering is decent but not much more, and the playing of the orchestra is less than ideally robust or refined, a tad soggy when it should be pin-sharp, unseductive when it should make you swoon. Iaciu doesn’t make for the feistiest Hero’s Companion in his somewhat cautious-sounding solos, while there are several tuning issues in the wind section (including a slight sourness in the final chord).

If the Strauss is uncompetitive in a crowded field, the coupling might be a draw, and there are certainly fewer alternatives when it comes to Albéric Magnard’s noble, gently moving tribute to his father, composed three years before Strauss’s 1896 tone-poem but otherwise hardly an obvious companion. But the performance here, though loving, lingering and heartfelt, has similar issues, both in terms of engineering (it was recorded four years later than the Heldenleben) and playing. If you can find it, Michel Plasson’s account as part of his Toulouse cycle of the composer’s symphonies (EMI, 3/84, 3/87 – nla) is an altogether higher-quality affair.