For their first ‘Secret Fauré’ disc (12/18), Ivor Bolton and the Basel Symphony Orchestra surveyed the composer’s incidental music and theatre scores, placing Pelléas et Mélisande (with the telling addition of Mélisande’s song) alongside the altogether lesser-known Caligula and Shylock, making strong cases for a re-evaluation of the last two in the process. Its successor broadly follows the same format in juxtaposing the rare with the familiar, though here we’re aware of a greater emphasis on contextualisation and that the music itself is arguably more uneven.

The orchestral version of the Élégie, originally for cello and piano, is placed beside three more short concertante works that similarly began life as instrumental (the piano Ballade) or chamber music (the Berceuse and Romance for violin and piano). Fauré, meanwhile, reworked material from the later movements of the Symphony in F of 1870 as the Menuet and Gavotte of Masques et bergamasques in 1919. Only the first movement of the original Symphony itself survives, and is performed here in Bärenreiter’s new critical edition. Constraining late-Romantic profusion within almost textbook sonata form, it arouses mixed feelings: a double exposition, followed by too short a development and an unvarying recapitulation, results in excessive repetition of the same material; and beautiful though some of it is, you understand by its close why Fauré eventually omitted it from his work-list. Of the concertante pieces, the exquisite Berceuse and more troubled Romance deserve greater attention, though the Ballade, once past its striking, Chopinesque opening, loses its way and becomes discursive.

The performances are good, however. Though he can’t disguise the flaws of the Ballade and Symphony, Bolton is elsewhere keenly alert to the bittersweet qualities of Fauré’s music, and there’s some delightful playing throughout. The Basel strings sound very elegant in the delicate Ouverture to Masques, and there are some particularly lovely woodwind solos, above all in the Pavane, which serves effectively as a filler. Antoine Lederlin’s Élégie is very reined-in and reflective (you might prefer a bit more dramatic bite here), while Oliver Schnyder is admirably delicate and dexterous in the Ballade. Violinist Axel Schacher, though, steals the solo honours in both Berceuse and Romance, with playing of understated elegance and exemplary refinement.