Having started promisingly with a stimulating coupling of Symphonies Nos 2 and 4 (7/01), succeeding releases within Sakari Oramo’s CBSO Sibelius symphony cycle have brought a measure of disappointment. Sad to relate, that’s also case with this final instalment.

For all its virtues Oramo’s account of the Sixth continues to strike me as penny-plain by the side of, say, Vänskä, Berglund, Blomstedt (Decca, 11/96 – nla) or either of Sir Colin Davis’s versions, only really springing to life in the finale. That Oramo plunges us into this same movement after barely a second’s pause (thereby maintaining a momentum which usefully reinforces Sibelius’s deceptive Allegro molto marking) bothers me far less than the attention-seeking way he tunes his double-basses down an octave at nine and six bars before fig B (1'24" and 1'30" respectively) as well as a little later at three after D (2'31") – if memory serves, the young Finnish maestro resorted to similar tactics in the closing pages of the Fifth Symphony (A/01). As captured by the Erato production crew, the strings in particular are wanting something in richness and bloom (indeed, I’d have welcomed greater depth and detail throughout).

The Seventh also fails to storm the heavens. Not only does the Birmingham orchestra sound puny next to its Boston or Vienna counterparts, Oramo’s conception is neither as shrewdly paced nor as illuminating as any of the front-runners listed above. Tension slackens at the start of the strings’ luminous euphony from bar 9 after A (2'18"), and there’s a suggestion of fluster about those tricky transitions later on which tends to undermine the seamless integration vital in this of all masterworks.

Clocking in at an eyebrow-raising 15'42", Oramo’s Tapiola is something else again, as swift and sparky a traversal as we’ve had since Berglund’s probing Helsinki PO recording (which lasts just under 15 minutes). Ironically enough, it’s Berglund’s performance which evokes a greater feeling of breadth, but this distinctive newcomer contains much that readily fires the imagination, and Oramo invests the closing pages with a big-hearted, stoic strength. All in all, a Tapiola well worth investigating, albeit without displacing from my affections offerings from Neeme Järvi (DG, 12/00) or Segerstam (Ondine, 7/96), let alone venerable ‘golden oldies’ under the likes of Koussevitzky (Pearl, 7/90), Beecham (Dutton 6/99, or BBC Legends 5/00), Rosbaud (DG, 8/95) and Maazel (Decca).