The agony and the ecstasy of Rautavaara on a single super-budget CD: the Seventh Symphony, Angel of Light (1994), bardic music, expansive, ecstatic and post-Sibelian in its vivid evocations of landscape and birdsong, coupled with Angels and Visitations (1978), a dark-hued tapestry of varying timbres, imposing and not a littledisquieting. Both have been handsomely served on Ondine by the Helsinki Philharmonic under Leif Segerstam, whose appropriation of Rautavaara’s very singular sound-world is still second to none. Osmo Vänskä on BIS has also prepared a fine version of the Symphony with tempi fairly similar to those of Hannu Koivula on this, his second Rautavaara programme for Naxos.

Comparing Koivula with Vänskä finds the earlier release rather more transparent in terms of contrapuntal detail, more finely drawn, though the new CD scores with some imposing brass sonorities at the beginning of the finale. Koivula offers a forthright, decently played performance, more than adequate to the task of introducing this seductive music to a budget-conscious audience; but Segerstam – an accomplished composer himself – is more successful at suggesting a sense of wonder, so vital if the rainbow-tinted Symphony is going to make its full impact.

Angels and Visitations is a more unwieldy beast and the recording copes well with its dynamic extremes, especially the eerie rustlings of its opening pages and the darkening spectres that grow out of them. Again, Koivula is more than equal to his allotted task and again Segerstam offers the more compellingly comprehensive interpretation. Still, anyone seeking a trustworthy but inexpensive introduction to either work is well served here.