Lepo Sumera is probably best known for being Estonia’s culture minister during the time of the Singing Revolution. But there’s a good argument that he is also the country’s most compelling symphonist of the latter half of the 20th century – and this in an area of Europe where the symphony was still held up as vital all that time (Kerri Kota’s detailed booklet note explains some of the reasons why, beyond the obvious).

It is a good fit to hear Sumera’s first symphony next to his last; both fall into two movements of nearly equal length, while the disc itself rises to a summit given that the climactic argument arrives in the First’s second movement and the Sixth’s first. Sumera knew exactly what he was doing at the time of his Symphony No 1 (1981), when he had already abandoned atonality and started to explore a neo-modal style. Estonian hallmarks are all here: bell sounds, the influence of Arvo Pärt, and a sense of haunting tragedy weighing at the music, which moves in wave-forms in the opening movement. The second movement oscillates between ominous figurations and a riot of burlesque mania and leering quotations.

The two works also segue into one another as if they were the same score; the distinctive orchestration that closes the First, with woodblocks, is echoed in the opening of the Sixth. Written in 2000, just before Sumera’s death, the latter is a far more convincing piece of symphonic architecture. Sumera certainly hadn’t changed his style: the music is direct to the point of being filmic but conceived with a rigour that can lead to complexity. Here the second movement brings the sure sense of a symphonic culmination.

Politics is inseparable from this and so much Baltic music of the late 20th century, and while the First might be said to be a classic protest piece shrouded by the useful ambiguity of symphonic form, the Sixth might be said to reflect Sumera taking stock of the ‘new’ Estonia as he saw it at the turn of the millennium. It’s good to hear this important Baltic music in highly involved, admirably played performances from Estonia’s flagship orchestra.