Dukas: L'Apprenti Sorcier; Velléda; Polyeucte – review

After discs devoted to Théodore Dubois and Debussy, François-Xavier Roth and his orchestra turn their period-instrument attentions to another French composer whose career straddled the turn of the 20th century. All three of Paul Dukas's works here, though, belong to the 19th century. It seems to me easily the most successful of Roth's discs with Les Siècles so far, not only because the recording, from concerts in Venice and Le Mans in 2011 and 2012, is generally much better balanced than previously, but also because it throws a valuable light on the early works of one of the most intriguing and notoriously self-critical figures in French music.

It opens with what, thanks to Walt Disney's Fantasia, has become Dukas's easily best known work: the 1897 scherzo for orchestra, L'Apprenti Sorcier (The Sorcerer's Apprentice). But Roth's beautifully paced performance – with perfectly graded string textures that allow the characterful wind, especially the unapologetically woody bassoons, to come through easily – makes it seem anything but over-familiar, and allows the piece to be appreciated for what it is, a wonderfully imaginative piece of virtuoso orchestral writing.

Another piece from the 1890s, the very Wagnerian overture to Polyeucte, ends the disc, but the real discovery comes in between - Velléda, the scène lyrique that Dukas composed to the prescribed text by Fernand Beissier for the Prix de Rome in 1888. Dukas only came second, and after not even being placed in the competition at all the following year, he left the Paris Conservatoire in disgust. But Velléda is certainly a finely wrought and sometimes strikingly beautiful score, which unfolds the story of the doomed love affair between a Roman solider and a Gallic priestess with shapely vocal lines and touches of orchestration that hint at something much more distinctive to come; though in this performance a few more words from the soprano soloist Chantal Santon would have been a bonus.

With only 55 minutes' music, there would have been room for one of Dukas's other two orchestral works, perhaps the sumptuous poème dansé, La Péri, one of the underrated masterpieces of 20th-century French music. Perhaps, though, Roth is keeping that, and Dukas's Symphony in C, for another disc; that would be a real treat.