This extensive series has now reached volume 7 and will test the mettle of even the most fanatical lovers of music in the Czech lands. There is barely a name to cling to in the blizzard of diacriticals, and the like. Obscurity need not breed indifference - indeed it should be a spur to enthusiasm, in my book - and the programme has been thoughtfully compiled around the idea of Christmas and the winter season, so that a proper focus is given to what might otherwise be somewhat disparate.

The Thirty Years War (1618–48) had resulted in the Hapsburgs taking over the kingdom of Bohemia, but it was impossible to suppress the Czech love for music, a fact exploited by the Austrian nobles who filled their new Bohemian estates with musical talent. Once government had been transferred to Vienna, many Czech musicians moved away from their homeland to find work. As one Czech historian put it, ‘[A] lmost all the musical sources which welled up from the soil of Bohemia sped by the shortest course to join the main stream of the world’s music.’ … Some went to Vienna itself: Bárta, Fiala, Vent, Koželuh, Vanhal and the Vranickýs, but some went to Berlin, others to Mannheim, while Mysliveček made his home in Italy.

Jiři Ignác Linek opens the final volume with his Sinfonia Pastoralis. Born in Bakov near Prague he succeeded his father as choirmaster in his hometown. Though he followed the trajectory of most Bohemians of studies in Prague he doesn’t seem to have travelled much and certainly didn’t take appointments in estates beyond Bohemia. Probably intended for Christmas his symphony is enjoyable and well characterised, and short. The drone effects in the Adagio hint at the kind of folkloric tints that his more cosmopolitan Bohemian and Moravian contemporaries don’t pursue in their own symphonies and they’re all the more effective for it.

The second volume brings us more Vaňhal, his Symphony in G minor. This is a defter, more energetic and more engaging work than the one in the first volume. Solo winds have their say in the slow movement and the compositional level here is high. František Xaver Dušek was, like Vaňhal, another Bohemian who moved in Mozartian circles. Mozart played one of Vaňhal’s violin concertos and Dušek famously entertained Mozart when the younger man visited Prague for performances of Don Giovanni". Active both in Prague and Vienna Dušek turns in a Symphony of gallant confidence. The trio has a certain studied charm but a real sense of orchestral control and surety.

The range of the Bohemian – and to a lesser extent Moravian – musical diaspora can be very adequately gauged from the composers in this survey. Some underwent name-changing, Germanicising being the most opportune thing to do if seeking preferment in a ducal court, not least as regards pronunciation. In the first volume therefore we find Jiří Antonín Benda becoming Georg Anton and Jan Křitetel Vaňhal turning into Johann Baptist Vanhal, even Wanhal. And so on.