Norwegian contemporary music often gets overlooked (at least in the UK) next to that from other Scandinavian countries, so this disc of works from two of its leading composers comes as welcome redress – not least when it highlights the playing of Norway’s leading violinist.

Those who associate Rolf Wallin (b1957) with abstract poise and geometrical precision may be surprised at the pieces here. Idiomatically reconceived from its viola original, Under City Skin (2009) places violin and string orchestra in the context of ‘surround sound’ to provide an evocative ambience over four sharply contrasted movements which reach a culmination in the gritty ostinato interplay of ‘Locomotive’, before this subsides into the balm of ‘Pastorale’. Appearances (2003), heard in the version for 15 solo instruments, arguably leaves an even stronger impression as its motifs – simple in themselves – are metamorphosed via a process quixotic in its continuity but also memorable in its rhythmic shapes and glistening textures.

A noted critic and novelist as well as composer, Eivind Buene (b1973) has written extensively for electronic and improvised media, and this latter is discernible in the six Miniatures (2009), whose brevity belies a considerable expressive range from Webernian volatility to Ligetian irony, with a seamless continuity across the overall span. The three movements of his Violin Concerto (2016) can be played separately but the sequence is audibly cohesive as it unfolds from a prismatic agglomeration of detail, via a restive intermezzo, to a finale whose allusion to Bach’s Es ist genug makes explicit the Bergian play on intervals and timbre at the outset.

The playing of the Arctic Philharmonic under Øyvind Bjorå is sensitivity itself but it is Peter Herresthal, whose disc of the Nørgård concertos (6/12) was such a revelation, that commands attention on this finely recorded and informatively annotated release. Warmly recommended.