The premiere recording of Poul Ruders’s Fifth Symphony, completed in 2013 and premiered in 2015 by the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Nikolaj Znaider, shows that baby boomers can still rock. The fifth symphonies of Beethoven, Prokofiev, Bruckner and Nielsen are, of course, important works musically and emotionally, and Ruders leaves us in no doubt that his own Fifth is to be taken just as seriously.

It is larger than life, in three intensely self-referential and brilliantly orchestrated movements. In each, Ruders creates vivid soundscapes attuned to his inspirations – medieval to modern, often simultaneously – energised by cast-iron church bells, African drums, gorgeous horn solos, erotic flute riffs, breathtaking glissando-ing unison strings and countless other organically ingenious devices, including an occasional undercurrent of Steve Reich. And somehow, after all the noise and beauty, a sense of the natural world emerges which leads at the end to an authentic quiet reverence.

In Ruders’s programme notes (available on his publisher’s site, along with the meticulously detailed full score, but unfortunately not in the booklet that accompanies the CD), the composer reluctantly tells a more descriptive ‘Ring of Fire’ story but truculently compares it to ‘the short synopsis found on the backside of a novel’. He needn’t have worried.

Add the astounding virtuosity of the orchestra, Olari Elts’s inspired conducting and Copenhagen’s new Koncerthuset, which Gramophone in 2012 called one of the 10 best concert halls in the world, and Ruders’s new work is given the best possible start to its recorded life. If the 27-minute playing time doesn’t bother you then this is heartily recommended.