For those whose first exposure, like mine, to Kimmo Hakola’s music was through his earlier, experimental manner (as in his blistering First String Quartet of 1986, Ondine – nla), the exuberant Clarinet Concerto (2001) may come as a shock. It is a real sit-up-and-take-notice piece, built on a very large scale – more than 38 minutes in this riveting account, played with scintillating virtuosity by its dedicatee, Kari Kriikku – with four movements and an enormous expressive range. Hakola’s present style is broadly tonal and incorporates elements from a wide range of styles, from the avant-garde to Hollywood-like sentimentality to oriental world music.

It is a tribute to his compositional skill and the force of his creative personality that he is able to hold such a bewildering array together. The opening Introduzione starts in traditional soloist-versus-orchestra guise, as turbulent as the long succeeding Adagio amoroso (subtitled ‘Hidden Songs’) is, well, slushy. The Allegro farara third rattles through very entertainingly (with echoes of McPhee in places) before a huge orchestral shout signals the final ‘Khasene’ (Yiddish for ‘wedding’) and a chance for Kriikku and Oramo to show off their klezmer skills.

The couplings are no less involving, Kriikku providing a vigorous account of the unaccompanied short Diamond Street, the orchestra a most entertaining rendition of Hakola’s Verdoyances crépuscules (2004), a single-span Ivesian tone-poem full of conflicting idioms which evolve into a beautifully serene coda via a fine horn solo halfway through, played very touchingly by Esa Tukia. With demonstration-quality sound, this is all great fun.