Harri Vuori (b1957) came relatively late to music, not starting to study until his mid-teens. His teachers included Heininen, Hämeenniemi and Rautavaara who, with 16 symphonies between them, have proved ideal guides for when Vuori, at 46, finally overcame his youthful aversion to the form. In the booklet he writes of the symphony’s special meaning for him, but this is manifest in every bar of the works recorded here in Hyvinkää, where Vuori has been composer-in-residence with the orchestra since 1997.

Vuori’s style is fairly generic, the idiom that of early 21st-century post-modernism. One can sense elements of Heininen in the orchestral sound, though Vuori’s harmonic language owes more to Hämeenniemi, with its allowance of tonal centres (B flat in No 1, E in No 2). Both works are large-scale, running to almost 40 minutes, the First (2003) in four broadly conventional movements with only one break (between the opening Allegretto, with its Adagio non tanto introduction, and the ensuing Lento). Like Henze’s Seventh, it is something of a slow-burner, sounding massive and hugely impressive in places but taking a few hearings for all the elements to fall into place.

The Second (2007) is lighter in tone and very different in design and expressive profile. Its five movements play without a break to form a slow-fast-slow-fast-slow design, its harmonic language spectral, the textures often gossamer thin.

Neither symphony is quite as distinct an entity as those of Kalevi Aho or Jouni Kaipainen, but neither is an attempt to emulate theirs. Both works emerge from a different aesthetic and with something distinctive to say. The Hyvinkää Orchestra, which I had not previously encountered, play superbly throughout and the sound is excellent. Definitely worth a try.