Roger Sessions, hardcore modernist, hard-edged serialist, and all-round musical tough guy, is not an easy composer to love. But one gets the sense that Sessions couldn't have cared less if anyone loved him just so long as they respected him. But while the three works on this disc -- the Symphonies No. 4 and No. 5 plus the Rhapsody for Orchestra -- are all admirable, they are all fairly unlovable. While their structures are irreproachable, their intensity is unrelenting and their integrity is unassailable, their melodies are unmemorable, their intent is indecipherable and their meaning is incomprehensible. Or perhaps it is the performances. While one congratulates conductor Christian Badea for taking on the challenge of Sessions' music, one wishes he had been able to make it sound like anything other than deeply serious but as deeply impenetrable. And while one applauds the Columbus Symphony Orchestra for taking on Sessions' music, one wishes they had the ability to play it, but they too often sound as if they are scrambling just to keep up with the music. One suspects that movements entitled "Burlesque," "Elegy," and "Pastorale" should mean something; in Badea and the Columbus' performance, they sound like a series of orchestrated tone rows. New World's 1987 sound is functional but hard and gray.