Written for Chicago and Solti, the September 29, 1983 premiere of Lutosławski’s Third Symphony, broadcast twenty-four hours later by BBC Radio 3, suggested a masterpiece built to last. Several recordings later – by the composer (twice), Barenboim, Gardner, Lintu, Blaszczyk, Salonen, and at least two others – is testimony to the Symphony’s standing, to which Thomas Søndergård and a vibrant RSNO, recorded with a concern for detail, is a distinguished addition to its discography. The work is bookended and punctuated by an arresting motif, with various iridescent ideas and instrumentations being introduced and deftly held together until, roughly ten minutes in (Søndergård 11’54”), a powerful and pulsating development ensues, driven to tumultuous exhaustion, followed by a rebuild that is almost Brucknerian in its gloriousness, like the dawning of a new day, to leave a feeling of full-circle satisfaction, realised with assurance in this gripping thirty-two-minute account (the composer with Berliner Philharmoniker, his first version, takes twenty-eight).

Also included is Grażyna Bacewicz’s Overture for Orchestra, bustling and pastoral, and Symphonic Fantasy on King Roger, Iain Farrington’s arrangement of music from Szymanowski’s opera, well-enough intentioned – awesome, meditative, suggestive of being isolated in mountains, yet lacking drama if not mysticism, somewhat incidental overall if a flavoursome introduction to the stage-work if needed. Linn CKD758 is released on March 28.