Ondine’s association with Hannu Lintu continues with the first and last of Lutosławski’s symphonies. The composer harboured doubts over his First Symphony (1947), but it hardly feels a stylistic cul-de-sac. Roussel’s Third is a likely model for its formal trajectory, framed by tersely argued Allegros whose energy is bracingly conveyed by Lintu, as is the stealthy interplay of suavity and belligerence in its Scherzo. The highlight is a slow movement whose expressive fervour, building to an apex of anguish, powerfully reaffirms its wartime genesis.

Forward over four decades to the Fourth Symphony (1992), in which Lutosławski’s mature idiom reached a peak of sophistication. Not least in its follow-through of ‘introductory’ and ‘main’ movements, subsumed into a seamless continuity so the powerfully cumulative later stages emerge inevitably out of the ruminative music (strikingly redolent of Szymanowski) before them. The acerbic experimentalism of Jeux vénitiens (1961) feels slightly reined in here, though the capricious flute arabesques of its third section are most alluringly rendered.

Indeed, the Finnish Radio Symphony yield little in precision and responsiveness to that of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Esa-Pekka Salonen, whose integral survey is a strong if not uncontested option. Choice for Lutosławski’s symphonies is now extensive, with Stanisław Skrowaczewski’s incendiary First (CD Accord) and Roman Kofman’s long-breathed Fourth (CPO) required listening. Superbly recorded and comprehensively annotated, Lintu’s versions are worth considering, with hopefully a release of the Second and Third Symphonies to come.