‘The most prolific female composer of the 19th century’ – it’s an achievement of sorts, but Emilie Mayer (1812-83) deserves much better from posterity. With this release of No 7, a complete cycle of her six extant symphonies (Nos 5 and 8 are lost) can be assembled from previous CPO albums and a recent Capriccio recording of the B minor Fourth as reorchestrated from the surviving piano reduction.

Salient points of reference, to help you get your bearings, include a Mendelssohnian turn of phrase and the kind of rhythmic obsessiveness to be found in Schumann. Both opening movements, especially in No 7, share the fiery impulsiveness of Bruckner’s first three symphonies, if we include the first two ‘study’ symphonies, the ‘00’ sharing with Mayer’s Seventh the stormy F minor key into which Mendelssohn (the Op 80 Quartet) and Tchaikovsky (Symphony No 4) poured some of their most troubled thoughts.

Despite ostensibly contrasting episodes, what both finales fatally lack is tension – the symphony’s hash has been settled offstage at some unseen and unheard point, and everyone has trooped back on to tell us that the sun is shining and all will be well. This is true even until the very last bars of the F minor Symphony, when the mood abruptly turns dark in a reversal of fortune as surprising as it is unconvincing, at least when set beside last-minute symphonic reversals engineered by Mendelssohn (the Scottish – A minor to A major) and Tchaikovsky (the Fifth – E minor to E major). Nevertheless, amid the worthy revivals of women composers from the past 200 years, Mayer and her symphonies merit serious and sustained attention, live performances and more recordings.

Meanwhile, these accounts will do nicely, sharing as they do the virtues of the Beethoven and Mendelssohn cycles on Channel Classics led by Jan Willem de Vriend: crisply articulated drama, neat ensemble work and an undoctrinaire application of mid-19th-century performance practice as we currently understand it. Scholarly booklet notes; equally generous but lucid recorded sound.