The main work on John Wilson’s new Dutilleux disc is the 1953 ballet Le loup, commissioned by Roland Petit to a scenario by Jean Anouilh and Georges Neveux. It’s a curious work in some respects. The narrative, a dark variant on Beauty and the Beast, deals with a Bride conned by charlatanry into marrying a Wolf (or Wolf-man in some accounts of the piece) when her Groom deserts her on their wedding day for a Gypsy. The growing love between Bride and Wolf, however, results first in her rejection of the Groom when the deceit is revealed, then in the couple’s murderous persecution at the hands of the uncomprehending society in which they find themselves.

Despite his attraction to the subject, Dutilleux, always the painstaking craftsman, found adhering to Petit’s timetable difficult, eventually delivering the score piecemeal in instalments, which explains, perhaps, why the work takes time to find its feet. The opening fairground scene, in which a mysterious Animal Trainer turns men into animals and back again, and the Gypsy seduces the Groom, is episodic and wears its debts to Stravinsky and Bartók too much on its sleeve. Dutilleux only settles when we reach scene 2, with its long pas de deux, sombre yet erotic, for Bride and Wolf, after which music and dramatic flow become more original and coherent.

Believing the score inseparable from Petit’s choreography, Dutilleux discouraged concert performances in his lifetime. Few conductors have consequently been drawn to it, and its outings on disc are rare, so Wilson’s recording is more then welcome. As one might expect, it’s flawlessly done, scrupulously paced and played, with Dutilleux’s often extraordinary colours and textures beautifully explored. The Gypsy’s solos in the tricky opening scene – parallel woodwind in pairs over drum taps – sound impertinently sensuous. That big central pas de deux deepens in sensuality and tenderness as it goes. And the valse lente that eventually provides the doomed couple a moment of escape from the manhunt that pursues them is ravishing. The recording would have been more usefully tracked, though, by individual dances rather than scenes, and we really could do with a far more detailed synopsis than the one provided.

Its companion pieces are orchestrations by Kenneth Hesketh of three of the works for instruments and piano that Dutilleux composed as Conservatoire test pieces in the 1940s, in which Hesketh, who studied with Dutilleux, replicates his teacher’s sound world with fastidious care. Tuned percussion makes the opening of the flute Sonatine sound very exotic. The Oboe Sonata loses some of its austerity when transcribed for orchestra, though the pizzicato walking bass that ushers in the first movement points up Dutilleux’s attraction to jazz. Sarabande et cortège begins seductively with low strings, then builds to an almost cinematic climax towards the end. The performances, with Adam Walker, Juliana Koch and Jonathan Davies as the respective soloists and Wilson digging deep into the subtleties of Hesketh’s instrumentation, are first-rate.