If you haven’t heard Louise Farrenc’s music, you might doubt the fervent claims made about it. Can her recently revived First and Third symphonies really ‘stand comparison with virtually any [others from the] mid-19th-century’, as Richard Wigmore insisted when Laurence Equilbey’s recording, an Editor’s Choice, first showed up a couple of years ago? In fact, those works deserve the accolades – as do the earlier, more robustly orchestrated overtures and the lithe Second Symphony that Equilbey includes on her follow-up. This is vital music of bracing energy and absorbing melodic character that circumvents well-beaten paths.

I don’t mean that Farrenc embraces the kind of radical innovations that Berlioz (who admired her work) exploited; shock is rarely in her arsenal. But while RW is correct that she ‘never meanders’ (at least in the sense that she never forsakes the music’s through-line), she never does exactly what you expect, either. Kaleidoscopic orchestration (treatment of woodwinds is especially inventive), unpredictable phrase-lengths (for instance, in the seven-bar introduction that abruptly drops us into the Second’s finale), formal and rhythmic swerves (the third movement is full of disarming surprises) and a propensity to recast her musical ideas where a lesser composer would simply repeat them: all of this ingeniously plays off against the Classical structures that serve as her base. The result is a striking combination of caprice and rigour that lifts the music out of the ordinary.

The power and ingenuity of Farrenc’s orchestral output is so great that even mid-level performances, like those of Christoph König (Naxos, 6/17, 1/20), make a strong impression. Still, the intricacy of her writing – for instance, the conversational back-and-forth among the instruments – blossoms when it’s set out by a first-rate ensemble such as the Insula Orchestra. The sophisticated contrapuntal weave of the Second Symphony’s finale, for example, certainly has more focus here than it does under König, not to mention Johannes Goritzki (CPO). Those earlier recordings made the case for Farrenc; Equilbey and her period-instrument players clinch it.

It’s hard, though, not to register frustration at Erato’s marketing. Those who prefer physical media, and who purchased the first instalment of this series, can apparently only buy the second in a two-disc set that duplicates their initial purchase. Not a decision that benefits the listener – or the composer.