Before one gets too excited at the tagline ‘9 world premiere recordings’ on this all-Cherubini disc from Riccardo Chailly and the Filarmonica della Scala, note that they’re all brief marches, mostly perky and inconsequential, composed for political or civil occasions. But then, hey, in the early ’70s Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic winds put out a two-disc album of Prussian and Austrian marches …

The 1805 March for Baron Peter von Braun (the dedicatee of Mozart’s Gran Partita, no less) is suitably Harmoniemusik in flavour, while others go off with a jolly swing, peppered with piccolo and percussive splashes. Among the most interesting of the premieres are the march for a lavish commemoration of General Louis Lazare Hoche (1797) and that composed for Charles X’s coronation (1825) which was much admired by Hector Berlioz; one can hear the same sonorities in his own Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale. Chailly adds the sombre (already recorded) Marche funèbre (1820) for the Duke of Berry, which is suitably weighty, with lots of atmospheric gong.

Cherubini moved to Paris in July 1786 and became a French citizen in 1794. He was, in the words of fellow composer Étienne Méhul, ‘France’s leading composer’. Chailly opens with the fine Overture in G, commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society in London 1815, which is full of dramatic twists and turns, with hints of Beethoven in its Sturm und Drang-style Allegro spiritoso section.

Arturo Toscanini, Chailly’s predecessor as music director at La Scala, was a great advocate of Luigi Cherubini’s music, so it’s interesting to compare their approaches to his Symphony in D, which is the major work on this new disc. It’s interesting to listen to this work in the context of Beethoven’s symphonies: it was composed in 1824 for the RPS at precisely the same time that Beethoven dedicated to it his score of his Ninth. Cherubini’s is far more Italianate in style, more operatic, yet it’s surprisingly old-fashioned. For example, Cherubini still includes a third-movement minuet, which Beethoven had long since abandoned in his symphonies.

Given Chailly’s taut Beethoven cycle with the Leipzig Gewandhaus, I was surprised at how plush and ‘comfortable’ much of this sounded. There’s plenty of energy, but it’s stifled within a velvet glove. It’s Toscanini and the NBC SO who deliver the greater punch. There’s still plenty to admire in the Scala playing, especially in the gentle Larghetto cantabile or the sunny finale, with its Haydnesque high spirits.