In his booklet note to this new release, Carl Vine writes: “The term Enchanted Loom was coined in the 1930s by British neuroscientist Sir Charles Sherrington to depict the function of the human brain as it weaves together our personal impression of the outside world and constructs, from raw sensory data, our internal sense of location, identity, and ‘mind’.

The brain is indeed a miraculous thing. For example, I still remember the excitement of hearing for the first time Carl Vine’s Symphony No 7, Scenes from Daily Life, in 2009 in a WASO performance which went on to win the Classical Music Awards’ Best Performance of an Australian Composition. And in my brain, it now forms a bridge between ABC’s set of Complete Symphonies, which at the time of recording numbered six, and this new recording featuring Vine’s Symphony No 8, The Enchanted Loom.

The other works included here are Vine’s First Symphony, MicroSymphony (1986); V (2002); Concerto for Orchestra (2014); and Smith’s Alchemy (2001 –...