We’ll get to the cello concerto later because the main event here is Water Atlas, the final part of Sebastian Fagerlund’s grand orchestral trilogy with roots in his season as composer-in-residence at the Concertgebouw. It uses Fagerlund’s standard ‘spiral’ formal procedure in which the same material is looked at from different perspectives, alternating calm stasis with frantic activity in a series of arch-like episodes. After the precarious tectonics of Drifts, here there is a sense of oceanic phenomena at work – deep-rooted energies coming to bear on the music’s surface, which eventually settles into flat equilibrium.

There are passing moments of very standard tonal harmony and a passage in which something like a trumpet cantus firmus grinds against the orchestra’s spatial heaving (impossible not to think of Sibelius’s Fifth). Fagerlund’s marbled textures are magnificent and all his own, and there are some otherworldly solos, not least from FRSO solo clarinet Christoffer Sundqvist. In the notes, Kimmo Korhonen describes Water Atlas as ‘the focus that brings [the trilogy] together’. Maybe. Presently I’d point to the middle instalment Drifts as its masterpiece.

In Nomade, we have another six-movement concerto from Fagerlund (like the guitar concerto Transit, coupled with the two previous pieces from the trilogy, 7/18), though this has two interludes thrown in. Again, it is a road movie of sorts, travelling through various landscapes, but the cello is less prone than the guitar to standing back, awestruck by them.

Elements of folk and Baroque music lie behind the work’s lucidity but the solo instrument can seem overly decorative and incidental, superimposed upon Fagerlund’s deep-rooted structures rather than in command of them, while some transitions feel clunky and the stomping dances a little obvious. There are spellbinding moments: the fresh air and eastern promise of the Lento contemplativo, featuring schooling woodwinds that seem to advance familiar Fagerlund techniques; the distillation of the Espressivo liberamente; the cadenza that follows in which the cellist appears to play a folk tune, accompanying itself with a drone. It is beautifully played by Altstaedt, who uses his instrument from top to bottom. A concerto that wouldn’t disappoint in the concert hall, for sure, but it’s Fagerlund’s trilogy that’s essential listening.