Despite his Mexican-sounding first name and Swiss birth, Pancho Vladigerov (1899-1978) was Bulgarian through and through. Largely forgotten outside his native country today, his name was well known in Central Europe in the 1920s, not least through his collaboration with theatre director Max Reinhardt. His position in Bulgarian music is roughly akin to that of Enescu in Romania or Grieg in Norway.

As a composer, Vladigerov may not have been their equal, but he was a fine melodist and sumptuous orchestrator. Symphonic rigour was not his forte – as Eckhardt van den Hoogen’s somewhat eccentric booklet-note avers – but the music is attractive and well written, as confirmed by his best-known work, the rhapsody Vardar (1922), a kaleidoscopic portrait of the great Balkan river. Originally a violin-and-piano duo for himself to play with twin brother Liuben, Vardar exists in versions for violin and orchestra, piano (solo, duet and duo) and – given here – full orchestra (1928).

Vladigerov embraced many styles within a late romantic-nationalist idiom, as can be heard vividly in the suite drawn from his music to Strindberg’s A Dream Play (a Reinhardt production) where impressionism, Balkan folk and Nordic lyricism amiably rub shoulders. Finest of all, though, are the Seven Bulgarian Symphonic Dances (1931), collectively a rich panoply of his homeland’s folk heritage that gets better and better with each hearing. Superb performances from Berlin – where the composer lived and worked for almost 20 years – under (Romanian) Andreescu’s sympathetic direction. Lovers of Bax or early Havergal Brian should not hesitate.