This is Øystein Baadsvik’s third tuba concerto disc for BIS, previous instalments featuring 20th-century and 21st-century repertoire. The three works here were completed in the last five years, Christian Lindberg’s Panda in Love (2007 10) being the earliest, Bogey Thresher by Jon Øyvind Ness following the next year and Baadsvik’s own in 2012. They make a very contrasted programme, full of humour, as might be expected considering that two of the composers are brass virtuosos, while Lindberg has developed into a competent, if not genially unconventional conductor.

Baadsvik’s engaging Concerto opens the disc, the most abstract in title and structure though there are clearly some (undisclosed) extramusical inspirations, most notably in the breezy outer movements where African and jazz rhythms dominate the textures. Baadsvik’s musical language is tonal and he has a gift for light-filled, lyrical melodic lines. So, too, does Lindberg in Panda in Love, which takes the form of a suite in six fairly descriptive movements, the titles of which indicate their mood and expressive purpose, such as the ‘Pooh-like Panda’ searching for something he cannot find or, more satirical in tone, ‘Panda in Protest – Goes to Tiananmen Square’. What goes on in ‘Lion Cub’ is anyone’s guess!

The longest work (and track) here, the 23-minute-long single-movement Bogey Thresher, also has its humorous side. Ness was influenced by the French spectral school but, in Bogey Thresher, a musical portrait of a machine which harvests ghosts, he adopts in places a more conventional, non-spectral idiom. Musically the most interesting work here, it is played with a superb po-face by Baadsvik. The Arctic Philharmonic and Lindberg prove exemplary accompanists.