Charles Tournemire (1870–1939) was one of the great French organists of his generation – organist at Sainte-Clotilde in Paris and a pupil of César Franck, whose cyclic method and religious mysticism shaped the eight symphonies he composed from 1900 onwards. The First Symphony in A major, Op. 18 (1900), nicknamed ‘Romantique’ as a parallel to Bruckner’s Fourth, is cast in Franckian cyclic form, its four movements giving an unusually prominent role to the solo violin. The Fifth Symphony in F minor, Op. 47 (1913–14) was inspired by the mountains of the Alps: built on chorale variations and rising, in its finale ‘Vers la lumière’ (Towards the light), from darkness to radiance, it was composed at the very time Richard Strauss was writing his Alpine Symphony. The Moscow Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Antonio de Almeida in this Marco Polo release devoted to a symphonist unjustly neglected since his death.