All right, he's not Mahler... but waking up to Douglas Lilburn's Diversions for String Orchestra this morning reminded me how interesting New Zealand's national composer is. Isolated with a small number of fellow spirits at the far end of the world for most of his creative life, he nevertheless produced a decent body of attractive, stimulating, music.

He studied under Vaughan Williams in London in the years leading up to WW2; this early period produced two fine overtures. The Drysdale Overture evokes his childhood on a North Island station, far from other habitations, and contains a wonderful, yearning tune; the overture Aotearoa bracingly evokes the Land of the Long White Cloud.

Then there are the three symphonies, written after his return to New Zealand. Number 1 seems on first acquaintance very derivative of Sibelius, but repeated listening reveals an individual voice behind the Sibelian sounds. Number 2 is, I think, probably his finest work - a wonderful, sweeping theme to open it, and a splendidly perky scherzo. The third and fourth movements don't quite live up to the first two, but the whole is nevertheless very satisfying. Symphony number 3 is a tougher piece, its single movement in what had by then developed into a highly personal style. It reminds me somewhat of Neilsen's Sixth, in that it is very difficult to get to grips with.

There is also quite a lot of choral, chamber and piano music (which I so far find less impressive on the whole, although I may simply not have given it the same attentive listening as the works I like best). But after 1960, nothing other than electronic music. This I find baffling. That a composer who had, after many years, found his own unique means of expression in a traditional yet challenging idiom should immediately abandon it for the sterility of electronically generated squawks and warbles is very frustrating. Even after reading the recently published biography of Lilburn, I still don't understand why.

Never mind - the good news is that after many years during which it was hard to obtain recordings of Lilburn's music, the best of it is now available on two excellent Naxos discs. I urge anybody who has not heard Lilburn to investigate them.

Clearly Lilburn didn't regard the electronic medium as "sterile", and since you do you're hardly in a position to be anything but baffled about his change of musical direction. If you let go of that prejudice a little you might understand the hows and whys a little more and you might even end up enjoying the music, which I suspect you haven't heard - it actually isn't "electronically generated" but is composed on the basis of natural sounds, since Lilburn believed that such means would encapsulate his experience of the New Zealand environment and landscape more precisely than a musical tradition belonging to the other side of the world. (Anyway he did continue to write instrumental music after 1960, as a glance at his worklist shows.)

I'm confident you'll find something to enjoy on those discs, Reiner.

One work I didn't mention (because recordings of it are hard to obtain in Europe) is the song cycle Sings Harry. Ten minutes of delight, in which each of the six songs seems better than the last. There is a New Zealand recording of it, in two versions, if you get as hooked by Lilburn as I am.

I'm guessing that harrumph first came across Lilburn in the Oryx recording of the Third Symphony and Aotearoa Overture (17/6), as I did , if not in the late 60s, then the early 70s. I seem to have collected the symphonies twice on CD (Judd on Naxos and Hopkins on Continuum) but apart from the overture haven't investigated any of the rest of his output. Something else to add to the burgeoning list!

Where would be a good place to start on Lilburn's later music?

NZ$125 for 3CDs and a DVD?!

This set's even more - but you do get 10 discs of documentary material. One for the Lilburn completists.

Umm £40 approx isn't really so bad for 3CDs plus DVD is it?