Joseph Marx (1882-1964) was a well-loved teacher, administrator and critic in Vienna, chiefly between the wars, generous with his time and generous in his wrath against almost all modern music. He remained all his life a strong supporterof tonality, and one of his books goes so faras to exclude all mention of Schoenberg,Berg and Hindemith.

Not surprisingly, then, the three works of his Nature Trilogy are resolutely conservative in their language, which is rooted in the late-19th-century Austro-German tradition but also owes much to some aspects of Debussy. His frank admiration of L’après-midi d’un faune shows particularly in the second work of the cycle, the ‘Idyll’, though this is a matter of atmosphere rather than any attempt to match Debussy’s intricate formal procedures. There is, however, a comparable delicacy of orchestration, which is richer in the other two pieces. They may well remind English listeners of the Delius of Paris or Over the Hills and Far Away; though Marx is unlikely to have known them, there is something of the same melodic profusion and rhapsodic outpouring. At its best, the music has great charm and falls easily on the ear, as was indeed always Marx’s intention.

‘Spring Music’ is freshly and attractively written, with a happy use of the orchestra to portray a teeming spring landscape in a manner that had served composers well over many years, at least since Beethoven. Steven Sloane and the Bochum players lavish much affection on the music, and make out a good case for this revival.