The new Kaija Saariaho-funded organ at the Musiikkitalo in Helsinki has sparked a mini-revival for the composer’s organ concerto Maan varjot (‘Earth’s Shadows’), a streamed performance of which, from Olivier Latry in Gothenburg, I reviewed in the February issue. This live recording from Radio France, also with Latry, does nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for the score as one of Saariaho’s most striking and successful works – an organ symphony, perhaps more than concerto, which brilliantly applies spectral principles to a form established by Guilmant. Particularly well captured here is the riot of thick, dark colours prompted by the organ registration that swills into the orchestra and the tinnitus at the very end of the piece, in which you hear the mechanism of the solo instrument (always a thrill in any organ recording) – presumably the Grenzing organ installed when the radio concert hall was rebuilt a decade ago.

That piece headlines this series of live recordings taped across various concerts at the Maison de la Radio. I am less convinced by Latry and Anssi Kartunen’s duetting in Saariaho’s Offrande, which can’t persuade me that the piece doesn’t belong in that bracket of Saariaho’s work that may have absorbed her more in the writing than it does us in the listening. But I warmed far more than before to True Fire in this performance from Davóne Tines under Olari Elts, the baritone’s intimacy and directness of delivery in the six English texts by six poets underlining how rooted the composer sounds, a quality her less successful music craves. French orchestras have always had a revealing way with Saariaho – a reminder that her music might owe more to Debussy than anyone – and the Orchestre National de France seem to speak their native tongue here as much as Tines communicates so effectively in his. When I return to the ‘original’ recording of True Fire from Gerald Finley and Hannu Lintu, I find little lacking there either. Over to you.

Château de l’âme sets Hindu and ancient Egyptian texts in tracing the love between a man and a woman. That sort of material can draw frustrating noodling and gestural clichés from Saariaho but this piece, at least, engages by deploying a chorus behind the solo singer (in addition to an orchestra), which is cast almost as an echoing subconscious. As such, it demands more specificity of gesture from the lead voice, and there is no lack of conviction from Faustine de Monès’s performance here. This is one of those Saariaho works that appears to exist elsewhere, linguistically as well as musically, but its passages of melodrama – voices springing suddenly into speech – slips into an almost pantomime cliché that’s too close for comfort.

If I appear to be in the minority in continuing to view the late Saariaho’s output as a very mixed bag, there’s music on this valuable disc that I’ll return to while it reminds me, again, how the organ, her own instrument, could unlock such remarkable thoughts in her.