The genre of rescue opera runs as a subtextual thread through this intriguing programme, a welcome throwback to more exploratory times in programme-planning, and for Gramophone readers the longest performer’s shadow will be cast by Toscanini, who championed both the unloved Leonore No 1 Overture and the symphony which Cherubini composed in 1815, between the Eighth and Ninth Symphonies of Beethoven. While only the interestingly disruptive third movement comes close to allowing the plausibility of such a comparison, Bertrand de Billy brings his operatic experience to bear on a persuasively argued case for Cherubini’s compilation of gestures, taking the exposition repeat of its first movement (unlike any other recording I have encountered) and drawing out its competing voices. Without aiming for the relentless pressure of the NBC orchestra’s response, the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra make a more full-bodied corporate sound than the period-instrument bands who would more commonly play this music nowadays, rounded out by recorded sound that is, to me, ideally warm and clear.

In her two assumptions of women on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Maria Bengtsson’s soprano catches the MDG microphones with no less felicitous presence, every note ‘placed’ across the tessitura, impeccably unaspirated runs, a tremulous intensity at the top yet sufficient flesh on the voice to suggest Leonore herself is around the corner, both in the music and her career. She faces stiff competition from a legendary figure and no one is likely to match the vengeful grief of Callas at the opening of Ah! perfido, contriving somehow to reproach herself and her betrayer with each exclamation. That’s not to disparage Bengtsson’s more contained appeal to our sympathy, just to remember that some things are beyond compare.