There is a surprisingly contrasted programme on this disc, which looks at first to be a slightly esoteric survey of obscure Nordic string music. It is illuminated, though, by the juxtaposition of Bruch’s last work and Svendsen’s first of note, both pieces coming as they do from composers more at home in large-scale forms, and so perhaps the performances retain their mainstream chamber sensibilities only on the back of their appreciation of the pieces’ origins. They weren’t written too long after Mendelssohn’s great Octet, then (as now) generally accepted to be the first and best example of an unusual genre: the benign influence of Mendelssohn in the background (there is a lot of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in there, as well as the ubiquitous Octet) creates a wholly unique sound when combined, especially in the Svendsen, with the unavoidable inclusion of the composers’ native folk tunes.

The variety of backgrounds of the players on this disc brings a really artistic sense of collaboration to the performance. What it doesn’t honour, though, is our traditional perception of the dourness of the Nordic temperament; and, far from the sobriety of composers such as Larsson and Nielsen, this disc leads the listener into a joyful world of cheerful Vikings by way of its folkloric rhythms and intervals. Not that this performance bears the same rusticity, though, and although their size means they have almost infinite permutations, it is in this no-man’s land between chamber ensemble and chamber orchestra that the enormously polished Tharice Virtuosi create something really special.