The first significant point to strike home about this varied programme is the excellence of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester’s playing under the patient baton of Gerd Albrecht, who died a couple of years ago and was always at his best when unfolding unusual repertoire. Czech-American Jaromír Weinberger was something of a one-horse town, his opera Schwanda the Bagpiper being his single major hit, itself an outgrowth of Smetana and Dvořák. Anyone encountering the attractive Overture to a Chivalrous Play will hear the connection afresh. The works represented straddle the late Twenties and early Thirties. The Six Bohemian Songs and Dances subscribe to the Slavic musical pattern that Dvořák and Smetana had already exploited to such telling effect with their various orchestral dances and tone-poems, the sizeable opening Andante rubato an 8'30" violin rhapsody cast midway between Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen and Enescu in folk mode, beautifully played although, unless my eyes are deceiving me, the soloist – presumably the orchestra’s concertmaster (at the time) Hans Maile – is not credited.

Having referred to Weinberger’s Czech forebears I should also mention the German master Max Reger who, late in his all-too-brief life, served as the young composer’s guide in composition and was an abiding influence, especially in terms of counterpoint. Anyone familiar with the Fugue from Schwanda will already know that, like Reger’s fugues, it builds to a gargantuan climax. Similarly Weinberger’s Passacaglia for organ and large orchestra included here is rich in Regerian allusions, especially the atmospheric passacaglia itself and the closing fugue.

As to the opening Intrada, Janáček springs more immediately to mind, specifically in the work’s introduction. Good sound keeps Weinberger’s often dense textures loud and clear and I’d say that anyone with a taste for the Romantic Czech masters, and for Reger as well of course, will be well catered for.