Panufnik's music has always seemed more elusive than its demonstrable surface suggests. Even the wartime Heroic Overture – a work that plays to the gallery and knows it – has a more sober subtext as the Polish patriotic song on which it's based is secreted in the background. Is its relegation a symbol of repression? Could be, but Panufnik's driving optimism simultaneously transforms his source into a beacon of hope, something to be aspired to at a time of uncertainty.
The Tampere Philharmonic deliver a rhythmically propulsive and dramatically epic performance.
Throughout the disc, the Tampere brass sound has the swank and punch of a big band, while the string-playing is fastidiously nuanced – power-house sheets of sound rain down as required, and pianissimi are acutely hushed. This honed orchestral playing makes for a Sinfoniasacra that's a revelation. Probably Panufnik's most popular symphony, the work begins with brass fanfares embedded with tart harmonic ambiguities that Storgårds has primed with snarling clarity. His sense of pace, as Panufnik strips the orchestra down to strings alone and rebuilds again over a 30-minute duration, has the precision of sonar and supreme dramatic flair.
Panufnik's increasing interest in geometry governed much of the music he wrote in the 1970s, the Sinfonia di sfere included. The beauty of the music became highly objectified, just as his ear for piquant harmonies and idiosyncratic orchestration intensified. A potent combination, equally powerfully in the execution.

The Tampere Philharmonic under John Storgårds deliver a rhythmically propulsive and dramatically epic performance… Throughout the disc, the Tampere brass sound has the swank and punch of a big band, while the string-playing is fastidiously nuanced…