Daníel Bjarnason is best known to the record catalogue as the conductor responsible for the Iceland Symphony Orchestra’s continuing series on Sono Luminus charting the nation’s current crop of composing talent. Here’s a timely reminder that he is part of that crop. I write on the day the fourth revival of his 2017 opera Brothers was announced. Two of the works recorded here (not for the first time) sit deep in the Nordic contemporary music repertory.

Bow to String, in fact, is something of a classic. I remember hearing an older version of this compact cello concerto in Finland a decade ago and we hear it here in a revised version that clarifies Bjarnason’s processes: his holding up of a serene chorale-like motto (the eight bars of a song associated with a Ragnar Kjartansson installation) that cuts unusually deeply before it’s rotated and deconstructed, becoming steadily less present in the second and third movements than in the propulsive first. To a greater or lesser degree, much of Bjarnason’s music does something similar. In every sense, this is a strong performance of the piece that lays out its processes clear as day – perhaps as it’s the composer on the podium – with impassioned, multi-dimensional playing from Jakob Kullberg. It’s good to be reminded what a haunting emotional residue this piece leaves.

Bjarnason’s interest in concealment, deconstruction and reappearance is equally evident in Over Light Earth, an LA Phil commission also recorded before. As the Rothko-derived title suggests, its first movement is a vibrating slab of bright colour, highly ordered in form. The second is a more polyphonic, writhing, twitching beast (this named after a Pollock: Number 1, 1949). The gravitational harmonic pull and the ear for shifting colour and texture identify the composer while marking out a piece that once again seizes the mind in the broadest sense. Musically, it is as exquisitely controlled as the work of those artists, even as it appears to disintegrate and regenerate.

We know Bjarnason is good with text from Brothers but this is my first taste of his much-revisited Larkin Songs. The music is lyrical first and foremost, the vocal lines possessed of the clarity and suppleness of Gavin Bryars, even in the rhythmic drive of ‘It is for now or for always’. Slinky, lustrous performances come from Karin Torbjörnsdóttir with an alert Aarhus Symphony Orchestra behind her. No texts in the booklet – that’s a downer – and given the disc’s title, ‘From Earth to Ether’, we might have expected the spare minutes to have been partially given over to a performance of Bjarnason’s From Space I Saw Earth. I guess we’ll have to make do with the LA Phil recording of that piece conducted by the distinguished threesome of Zubin Mehta, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Gustavo Dudamel (C Major, 8/20) – and a newcomer from Iceland, courtesy of Sono Luminus, reviewed by Guy Rickards in June. But what’s included is worth the outlay, not least given the power, precision and personality of Bjarnason’s music.