While he may be less a born symphonist than having had symphonism thrust upon him, Carl Vine made a sizeable contribution to the genre over the 10 years from 1986. His musical idiom, intricate in texture but immediate in impact, is encapsulated in the crescendo of activity that is Celebrare celeberrime – though there is more to Vine’s symphonies than mere atmosphere.

Certainly the three-movements-in-one of MicroSymphony evinces a keen sense of compressing the formal design so that more extended proportions are implied, with a resourceful though never slavish use of traditional tonal functions giving an evident follow-through to the progressively more expansive spans of its two successors.

With the Fourth Symphony (heard in its revision – hence the title), Vine has created a ‘symphonic adagio’ that persuasively integrates relative motion and stasis, ensuring a journey from uncertainty to affirmation is made without superfluous rhetoric. Neither of the later symphonies really advances this thinking: whether in the concerto-for-orchestra display of the Fifth (with its perfunctory final tarantella), or the high-flown – though not bombastic – sentiments of the tableaux comprising the choral Sixth, there is a sense of Vine bending his creativity to the commission at hand rather than, as it should be, the other way round.

Still, with performance of a high order, spacious yet detailed sound courtesy of the Sydney locations, and detailed booklet-notes, there is no reason not to investigate this compilation of a composer whose lasting contribution to the symphony may yet be forthcoming.