Here’s the second instalment in Leif Segerstam’s Helsinki PO Sibelius symphony cycle for Ondine. Like its sparky predecessor (2/03), this newcomer serves up plenty of food for thought. Segerstam’s Second is a tauter, less wayward beast than his earlier Chandos version, though there remain a few fussy touches which will not please everyone (his treatment of the finale’s big tune sounds more self-consciously rhetorical). On the plus side, the opening of the slow movement readily ignites the imagination (the stalking bass pizzicato and bassoons’ lament are most creatively shaded and moulded), and in the finale Segerstam brings a luminous poetry to that magical Moderato assai transition at fig D (3'47").

However, by the side of Oramo’s no less pungently characterised CBSO version (the highspot of a variable cycle), tensions are fitful and there’s a curious dearth of spontaneity, whereas the younger Finn’s finale in particular generates tremendous sweep and ardour. Nor is Ondine’s close-set engineering ideal in terms of body, bloom and definition; the overall effect is airless, with woodwind balanced distractingly close.

It’s a similar tale in the Sixth, where I found myself craving greater lustre and atmospheric warmth – and Segerstam’s actual conception is not without its eccentricities. As on his 1991 Chandos version, he makes a meal of the first- movement coda and slams on the brakes a couple of bars earlier than marked at the finale’s fff apex (fig J or 5'24"). For all his intelligent observation and painstaking preparation, Segerstam fails to make the performance spring to life; I prefer his illuminating, bigger-hearted Danish account, warts and all. First-timers to this haunting score, though, should stick with the Vänskä – a real, breathing performance, stunningly captured by the BIS microphones.