Three of the works on this superbly performed and recorded CD are purely orchestral and could be described as tone poems (to use that deeply outmoded term). Anna Thorvaldsdottir has featured before on some Sono Luminus releases – and those of other labels – and is undeniably one of the most exciting composers of the younger generation. Metacosmos, like most of her pieces, is a challenging listen but has a clear structure. After a dramatically atmospheric opening, the music slowly builds towards its volatile central climax – which put me in mind, a little, of Marie Samuelsson’s Air Drum III – before dissipating into the ether. Even more gripping, however, is Oceans by the composer-violinist Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir. I have remarked on the fluency of her writing before in these pages but this orchestral fantasy takes this to a higher level. Her music is enormously compelling in its swell and fall – almost a modern Oceanides that seems to look as much inwardly as across the waters. There are no sudden squalls or tempests, unlike in Páll Ragnar Pálsson’s Quake. This is the most obviously experimental in ethos, a quarter-hour long concert piece for cello (virtuosically performed by Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir) that again seems to chart some broken inner landscape.

Haukur Tómasson’s beguiling Second Piano Concerto is the most outward-looking in some respects, a display piece that puts Vikingur Ólafsson on his mettle in a 17-minute single movement made up of several distinct, inter-related sections which move between light and shade throughout. The star performers, however, are the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, well directed by Daniel Bjarnason, whose understanding of the various styles, the underlying expressivity and sheer virtuosity of interpretation are wholly involving. Sono Luminus’s sound is first-rate, capturing the full range of this marvellous band in their wonderful concert hall, Harpa.