This album’s three works mark Albert Roussel’s musical progression – albeit in back to front order – from his time as a professor at Vincent D’Indy’s Schola Cantorum, through to his flirtation with ‘Impressionism’ and Debussy, to his maturity as a neoclassicist with warmth but without the jokiness of his contemporary Poulenc.

Although somewhat neglected nowadays, Roussel holds an important place in early 20th-century French music. Born into a bourgeois family, his father was a successful cloth cutter who died when Albert was only two, followed seven years later by his mother. The orphaned boy went to live with his grandfather, but he too died two years after. From then on he...