Both of the concertante works on this disc take the listener on journeys through slowly changing musical landscapes. Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen’s For Violin and Orchestra, composed in 2002 and revised the following year, features rhapsodic violin musings against a backdrop of evolving orchestral textures, initially strings, then woodwinds and brass. The violin is also accompanied by a series of thwacks, taps, scrapes and rattles from the percussion section. The impression this makes is of taking a walk through some sort of otherworldly rainforest, a relaxing expedition for the most part, although one that rises to a sense of crisis in the fourth of the work’s five uninterrupted sections. Much of the writing is very beautiful, communicating a reflective serenity which lingers long in the mind after the music has finished. Christina Åstrand, the orchestra’s leader, gives a deeply committed performance of the violin solo, and Nicholas Collon conducts with a fine ear for instrumental detail.

Allan Gravgaard Madsen, born in 1984, is composer-in-residence at the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra. Nachtmusik was written for Åstrand and her piano partner (and husband) Per Salo. The booklet note by Andrew Mellor explains that the piece was inspired by a night-time walk to the Marselisborg Forests south of Aarhus, during which the composer was struck by the rendering of colour as grey-scale in the diminished light. The work comprises three continuous movements which successively decrease in duration while increasing in tempo. The first movement, lasting almost 17 minutes, focuses almost entirely of the note E, which is presented in different lengths, volumes, timbres and harmonic seasonings. An expansion of the musical material and mood is heard in the second movement before concluding with a brief and somewhat unsettled final movement. The performance by Åstrand and Salo under Ryan Bancroft is extremely accomplished, and the sound quality in both works – the former recorded under studio conditions in 2017 and the latter in concert in 2019 – is wonderfully detailed and well balanced.