At the start of his otherwise commendable booklet essay, Christoph Schlüren lists all the dominant Swedish composers of Lars-Erik Larsson’s time, in order to ‘place’ him in context, yet omits curiously the one whose influence is most audible in the First Symphony: Kurt Atterberg. Larsson’s symphony dates from 1927 28, the apex of Atterberg’s fame, and opens almost as a variation of the older man’s Second Symphony. The result is an accomplished if apprentice work revealing many key facets of Larsson’s idiom, albeit without an overly distinctive voice.

Larsson was undoubtedly a musical magpie and he flitted between styles throughout his life. Listeners unfamiliar with the Four Vignettes from ‘The Winter’s Tale’, one of Larsson’s most popular pieces, written 10 years after the symphony, would be forgiven for mistaking these – and the contemporaneous Pastorale (1937), also from a theatre score – as lost incidental music by Sibelius. The writing is undeniably deft, not least in the handling of the orchestra, and full of lyric appeal and charm.

The ‘real’ Larsson can be glimpsed, perhaps, behind the two later works, Music for Orchestra (1949) – with its more angular chromatic lines (showing a familiarity with dodecaphony) – and the quietly beautiful Lyric Fantasy (1967). Music for Orchestra is the one major, mature utterance here and it, the Vignettes and Lyric Fantasy deserve wider currency. They draw splendidly idiomatic playing from the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra under the inspiring direction of departing Chief Conductor Andrew Manze, who has developed into one of the most gifted present-day occupants of the podium. CPO’s sound is gorgeous.