Four small-scale but by no means trivial works here complement the three volumes of Tansman’s numbered symphonies in Chandos’s valuable survey. Together they neatly sum up different phases of his output. Stravinsky, Ravel and Poulenc are joint godfathers to the Sinfonietta No 1 (1924), the acid tones of whose Mazurka second movement refract musical images from the homeland Tansman had left for Paris four years earlier. In 1951-52 the Sinfonia piccola shows him productively mining the seams of Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks, while in 1960 he was comfortably bedded down in the neo-neo-classical world of the likes of Jean Françaix in the Symphonie de chambre. The Second Sinfonietta of 1978 proves that he could “do” 12-note music (albeit of a simplistic and complaisant kind) as well as smuggling in popular Polish melodies and rounding everything off in neo-romantic consolatory tones.

Not everything sounds so second-hand or easy-going as I may be implying. There are some intriguing glances over the shoulder at unrealised threats, with some remarkable prophesies of Schnittke. Could the Russian have been listening to Tansman’s Symphonie de chambre when composing the first movement of his Concerto grosso No 4/Symphony No 5? Elements of the scoring and the headlong momentum of its outer movements are uncannily similar.

Oleg Caetani and the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana have their work cut out with some of Tansman’s exposed and unrelenting fugues and perpetuum mobiles. But they emerge with great credit; as does the music itself. First-rate recording quality and authoritative documentation support a more than worthwhile issue.