Grieg completed his youthful Symphony in a hurry in 1863/64, but declaring that “it belongs to a bygone Schumann-period in my life and never satisfied me,” he marked his manuscript “must never be performed”. Most scholars have agreed but since 1980, when Vitaly Katayev performed and recorded the work, audiences and record companies have been happy to see Grieg’s ban reversed.

A “blind tasting” session would identify the twin influences of Schumann’s potent, short-breathed chorale-like themes and Mendelssohn’s arching, romantic melodies in a classical structure. Parallels to the folksy elements of early Dvorák and Tchaikovsky (and even of Bruckner) might furnish a guess at the date of composition. Engeset relishes every stylistic discrepancy, every moment where a promising development peters out, or another potentially winning tune or sequence is impetuously squandered. Young Grieg may win nul points for form but the sheer range of melodic material and formal tactics attempted wins the day.

The couplings, reminders of a more mature Grieg’s orchestral skills, are still, for most of the world outside Scandinavia, near-rarities. The playwright Bjornson always seemed to bring out the latent Wagnerian in Grieg, and so it is here in the emotional ups and downs of Sigurd the Crusader. The Variations – which Engeset terms the “uncomplicated sister” of Grieg’s Op 24 piano Ballade – gets a passionately concerned performance which stresses the unity and drama of the work. The recordings deliver the Malmö orchestra’s work clearly and the disc is a convenient and inexpensive introduction to orchestral Grieg and the great charms of his prentice work.