Completed towards the end of the Second World War, Dag Wirén’s Third Symphony acknowledges the starker ‘militaristic’ modalities of the time while remaining rooted in the more neoclassical sort of Sibelius; woodwind pair off perkily, often in thirds. Its undeniably eclectic quality may momentarily put you in mind of Vaughan Williams during lyrical passages or of Nielsen during climaxes – some are quite dark – but there’s certainly enough of a distinctive voice to quell the doubts. Better at hustle and bustle than profundity, Wirén’s vaguely Gallic civility holds up until his inflated denouement, pastiche Sibelius in triumphalist mode. In the outer movements Rumon Gamba’s interpretation dispenses with some of Thomas Dausgaard’s impatient drive and the lovely slow movement is given more space to bloom on Chandos’s ample sound stage.

This is a work Gamba has given in London as well as Reykjavík and there’s no mistaking his affection for the idiom: his 70 minute anthology would seem intent on seducing the general collector. Very attractive it is too, even if I would not want to be without the famous analogue recording of the Serenade (1937) by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. With leaner forces Marriner elicits a measured yet snappier account of the finale once associated with a BBC flagship arts programme.

Gamba’s other choices, by turns gently motoric and wistful, are pleasant rather than earth-shattering. Neither lasts as long as 20 minutes and the composer’s French training discourages a recurrence of hyperbole. The tauter Divertimento, a product of the 1950s, brings no fundamental stylistic evolution. (Even when providing the melody for Sweden’s old-school entry in the 1965 Eurovision Song Contest, Wirén crossed Sibelius’s Valse triste with Prokofiev’s Cinderella.) In Chandos’s trilingual booklet, Gamba explains that he ‘wanted to record all the pieces using the large body of a full symphonic string section’. An eminently recommendable disc.