Long-time Reid Professor of Music at Edinburgh University, Sir Donald Francis Tovey (1875-1940) remains best known for his magnificently readable and insightful Essays in Musical Analysis (OUP: 1935-44). He was also a gifted pianist and composer, completing a Piano Concerto in 1903 (memorably championed by Steven Osborne for Hyperion, 10/98) and, 10 years later, this earnest and admirably ambitious Symphony in D.

Although lasting the best part of an hour and occasionally over-thickly scored, it’s a work which held my attention throughout on a first hearing, not least due to Tovey’s keen sense of long-term dialogue and harmonic adventure, allied to a felicitous mastery of counterpoint. Brahms and Reger are the most obvious stylistic templates (the symphony’s arrestingly pregnant pianissimo opening idea even hints at Nielsen), yet a quiet individuality emerges from the radiant Canzonetta slow movement in particular, and the scampering Scherzo has a pleasingly mischievous twinkle in its eye.

A very creditable performance, too, from the Malmö Opera Orchestra under George Vass (there is, fascinatingly, a historic alternative from 1937 conducted by Tovey himself on Symposium which I have yet to hear), who also acquit themselves most ably in the noble Prelude to Tovey’s 1918 opera The Bride of Dionysus which launches proceedings. Good if not perhaps ideally ventilated sound, as well as exceptionally detailed notes and analyses by Peter R Shore and the composer respectively, add to the attractions of this courageous and valuable issue from Toccata Classics. Here’s hoping this enterprising young label will now go on to give us some of Tovey’s chamber music.