When Tomas Svoboda’s First Symphony was performed in Prague in 1957 it apparently created a sensation as soon as the audience realised that the composer was only 16. It is a substantial 36-minute piece, which the composer reworked in the 1980s. By this time he had a teaching post in the US since his familyhad escaped communist Czechoslovakia in 1964.

Svoboda is a prolific composer with only a few recorded works so it is surprising that this release is substantially concerned with this revised symphony – there are five more. In this early work, Svoboda looks backward – not in the calculated way of Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony but with a rather obvious immaturity, where the influence is largely Beethoven.

More individual was the idea of writing a Marimba Concerto (1993) for the chief percussionist of the Oregon Symphony, who plays it here with fluency and panache. The marimba is partnered with what the composer calls a ‘keyboard’ group consisting of piano, harp, celeste, tubular bells and crotales: there are touches of minimalism and some novel textures.

The spaciously extrovert Overture (1978) was also written for the Oregon Symphony and functions as an effective showpiece. Everything is well recorded.