Dutilleux’s Second Symphony (1957 59) has not quite achieved standard-repertoire status despite a fair number of commercial recordings. Its distinctive sonorities derive in part from an unusual physical layout in which the main body of players is complemented by a smaller group of 12 drawn from each of the instrumental families, including prominent roles for timpani and harpsichord. The ensembles’ intended dialogue – dreamlike and jazz-inflected rather than confrontational – is not always readily apparent on disc. Then again, any attempt to attenuate textures in the interests of clarity risks pushing the expression in a chillier, more conspicuously contemporary direction than the composer intended.

Naxos’s busy sound man, Phil Rowlands, gives us an unusually close perspective on the upfront band, sometimes relegating the main orchestra to a subsidiary role but making it clear that the channel of communication exists. That suits Darrell Ang’s forthright approach, generally brisker and brighter than Ludovic Morlot in his acclaimed Seattle sequence of orchestral Dutilleux. The work’s mysterious final chord feels a little blunt and workaday in Lille after the disconcerting, distanced transparency achieved by its rival. That said, the award-winning Singaporean, a past artistic director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Bretagne, secures excellent results, never less than nimble and secure. I’d still opt for Yan Pascal Tortelier on Chandos if what you value in this music is its unaffected prolongation of earlier, not exclusively French symphonic traditions.

In Mystère de l’instant (1989), placed last on the disc, Naxos’s presentation scores over that of Seattle Symphony Media in tracking the 10 individual movements separately. Chandos did likewise. The work plays continuously but actually consists of brief, disconnected snapshots that ‘seize the moment’ rather than reaching blurrily for some elusive goal; cimbalom and percussion add piquancy and edge to the strings. In between comes the Van Gogh-inspired Timbres, espace, mouvement (1976 78) – now always played with the Interlude added in 1991. This can tax the resources of less prestigious cello sections. No real problems here, although the accompanying splurge of hall resonance doesn’t quite ring true. Morlot is broader and marginally cleaner than his competitors.

At bargain price this is a very promising start to a Dutilleux project from the orchestra which in 2014, under erstwhile chief Jean-Claude Casadesus, took the First Symphony as far as Shanghai, having previously recorded it in the 1980s. A remake is one of several items already in the can.