Anyone expecting a Rosenkavalier moment from this soundtrack of Lady Chatterley will be disappointed. In this French version of the DH Lawrence novel, Béatrice Thiriet’s music only accompanies the lovers’ separations, occasionally flanked by the sounds of the countryside. The Overture alone is a generously endowed melody on strings suggesting the mood of a lover’s tryst. Listeners might be reminded of the soundtracks of another French screen composer, Francis Lai.

Thiriet’s score consists of musical miniatures, some lasting half a minute or less. Flute trills illustrate “Les jonquilles” dancing like Wordsworth’s daffodills; “La cabane”, a piano exercise in the mould of Satie, represents the meeting-place of Lady C and the gamekeeper; strings chatter like birdsong (tr 11); and in “L’aigle” the eagle soars in a luminously scored theme, the most extended composition outside the Overture. Sound effects are the real thing: thunderclaps, drops of rain, a key in a lock and a motor car engine idling in the Interlude (tr 17).

The disc concludes with three tracks devoted to other films by Thiriet of which Petits arrangements avec les morts, scored for string quartet, is a jerky rural dance with a sweet sounding secondary theme. Her final composition is Vogel Star, based on a poem attributed to Mozart. Thiriet’s quirky setting captures the essence of this riddle about a demented starling. The mixed choral word-painting gives way at the end to the bird’s twittering on flute. The Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, as with many of their neighbours in soundtrack recordings, are totally at ease with this genre of music.