Although Johan Svendsen’s name remains familiar enough as one of the clutch of Norwegian composers one rung down from Grieg and Nordheim, his music is not as well exposed outside Norway as one would expect. Although the (mostly early) larger abstract works tend to attract the most attention nowadays, it is for his smaller, illustrative works that he was celebrated in his lifetime and this welcome Chandos collection focuses attention specifically on some of these.

Rightly praised for orchestral mastery, Svendsen’s music attracted the approbation – and its composer the friendship – of Wagner and Grieg, and Nordic audiences took it and him to their hearts. It is easy to hear why in the exuberance of Carnival in Paris, the Norwegian Rhapsodies or the delicate textures of the The Girl’s Sunday on the Mountain Pasture; I was less taken by the arrangement of Wagner’s ‘Träume’ but the legend Zorahayda, based on a Moorish tale retold by Washington Irving, is a gem of compositional technique. The limitations of Svendsen’s style are also readily apparent in a certain lack of character in his melodic invention; listen just to Romeo und Julia, a ‘symphonic introduction to Shakepeare’s drama’, which has none of the dramatic quality of Tchaikovsky or Prokofiev. In works such as the Festival Polonaise (in honour of the then newly crowned King Oscar II), his skill for occasional music is consummately realised.

With the exception of the famous Romance in G (Thorsen’s is nicely realised), there are few competitors for the works included here and none gathered on the same disc. Järvi once again draws some refined and vibrant playing from the Bergen Philharmonic and Chandos’s warm sound is vivid and bright.