Juha Kangas’s track record in Nordgren’s music goes back a long way, at least to the 1970 premiere of the Concerto for clarinet, folk instruments and small orchestra recorded here, in which he played the bowed harp. With the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra he performed, commissioned and recorded many Nordgren scores, and his understanding of the style is probably unsurpassed. His presence here gives these recordings an authority that would be second only to the composer’s, were he still with us.

The Concerto and First Symphony (1974) are relatively early, showing the composer in experimental guise, still seeking to satisfactorily integrate folk music within a radical, late-20th-century idiom. Neither quite manages it, although repeated listenings reveal how close he was getting. The Concerto is texturally unconventional, the folk trio operating increasingly independently as its five movements progress. The First Symphony (1974) is nominally more orthodox but the kaleidoscopic central concerto grosso contains some wildly diverse writing, including a wonderfully manic episode for trumpet that 1920s Shostakovich would have been proud of. It proves a welcome contrast to the rather grim opening March. The closing Epilogue rounds affairs out neatly but the work is a bit of a cul-de-sac; when Nordgren returned to symphonic production 15 years later, his view of the form was radically different.

The performances are superbly prepared and Alba’s sound is excellent, exposing every flick on the kantele string and nuance of attack on double-bass strings. Informative notes by Jouni Kaipainen, a fine composer – now when are we going to hear more of his music?