In his lifetime, Joseph Jongen was best known as an organist, writing much music for that instrument (notably the Symphonie-Concertante for Organ and Orchestra, 1926). However, the Belgian musician (1873-1952), a contemporary of Ravel, also wrote orchestral works and a decent amount of piano music. As a child prodigy he had an early start in composition, which explains why immature works like the First Cello Concerto breathe the same air as the late 19th-century Franck school of Chausson and Magnard. Franck, too, was Belgian.

However, Jongen soon discovered the French Impressionists. Their influence comes across clearly in these two sets of Preludes, played by the American-Serbian pianist Ivan Ilić. Debussy is present in the Op. 69 set of 1923: No IX, “Angoisse” could not have been written without Debussy’s “Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest” of 1910. (Tellingly, Ilić has won awards for his recording of Debussy’s Preludes.) Jongen’s individual preludes are not as uniquely individual nor as sharply focused as Debussy’s: Occasionally the composer falls into a habit of spinning a melody above...