Poul Ruders’s Third Symphony stands in the long line of Koussevitzky Foundation commissions that gave us Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, Copland’s Third Symphony, Peter Grimes, Turangalîla and numerous other monuments. Hardly as epoch-making as those precedents, Ruders’s two-movement symphony is nevertheless an imposing and impressive achievement. Don’t be misled by the Dreamcatcher subtitle into expecting anything kitsch-touristy or comforting. The nightmares trapped by the Native American talisman are as strongly portrayed as the good dreams it allows through. In fact, as Malcolm MacDonald’s sensitive and helpful note informs us, Ruders has explained that ‘behind the scenes…is the tale of Beauty being devoured by the Beast’. At first hearing I found the lengthy, trance-like Adagio sognante of the first movement less gripping than the Scherzo prestissimo of the second; but closer acquaintance shows how inter-dependent everything is in this tough-minded and rewarding work.

Ruders’s opera to Margaret Attwood’s dystopian futuristic novel The Handmaid’s Tale has made its mark in productions in Copenhagen, London and Toronto. Like some of the London critics, I find its vocal writing less gripping than the orchestral backcloth and that impression is reinforced – notwithstanding Susanna Phillips’s beautifully modulated tones – by the six-movement vocal Suite here recorded, where the Interludes and Postlude are far more atmospheric than the Arias themselves. Of course this is in part a generic problem with contemporary opera itself, which a brief review can hardly go into.

Sandwiched in between, the five-minute 1990 tone-poem Tundra clearly foreshadows the first Aria from the Handmaid’s Tale Suite. Snippets from Sibelius’s Fifth remind us that this is a hommage to the Finn from one of his most worthy symphonic successors. Here and in the Symphony I wondered whether a larger, more full-bodied sound might not do fuller justice to the music’s harmonic and timbral palette. But that is not to say this eighth issue is anything other than a fine continuation of Bridge’s invaluable Ruders series.