By 1896 the 61-year-old Saint-Saëns was more than a little fed up that of his eight operas only one, Samson et Dalila, had really made it. He even thought of giving up composing altogether. Luckily for us he persevered and, as well as the marvellous Fifth Piano Concerto, this year also saw the composition of his only ballet, Javotte, even if he insisted it was to be a ‘postscript’ to his career.

He began it in Aix-les-Bains in July and finished it a couple of months later and, in the words of his biographer Stephen Studd, it ‘has all the heightened airiness of texture of his later style, abounding with delicate orchestral effects to reflect the lightness, wit and exuberance of the story’. All of which the Queensland Orchestra under Andrew Mogrelia respond to splendidly. And how is it, I ask, that such delightful and superbly crafted music has had to wait until now to reach CD status? It is, moreover, ‘ballabile’ down to the last semiquaver and surely deserves a professional staging. Not to mention Saint-Saëns’s sense of humour: the transmogri- fication of the Father’s po-faced, fugal theme when he comes back from the village festival having drink taken (track 14) is reason enough on its own to buy the disc. The extracts from the ‘exotic’ Parysatis are no less enchanting.