John Storgårds conducted the world premiere and first recording of Sebastian Fagerlund’s opera Autumn Sonata (11/18), so he brings inside knowledge to this performance of the octet derived in part from that piece, Autumn Equinox. The other primary influence on the piece is Schubert’s Octet, whose scoring it shares. This is big music that belies its scoring, swaying in an almost orchestral manner from highly mobile, directional states to more introspective ones – operatic indeed, as is the music’s undertow and its rich and reverberant weave, imbued with a constant sense of the theatre of life in procedure even more than gesture.

Fagerlund’s lyrical gift is apparent throughout but really takes flight in the central Lento misterioso, whose long lines are threaded in delectable counterpoint. There is a sense here of Fagerlund treating tone colour as material, and the composer’s instrumental panache is even more to the fore in the righteous fury of the final movement, which includes a striking moment when string velocity powers down over long-held wind notes, resulting in a sort of weightlessness (echoes of Sibelius’s Symphony No 7) – a liminal state before the music swells up again via the bass. It is an exceptional performance in an acoustic with just the right resonance to cushion the mightily impressive contributions from the LCO’s solo clarinet, horn and cello.

Fagerlund’s bijou double bass concerto Arcantio was written for former Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra solo bass Niek de Groot, who plays it here with the prescribed small orchestra of single woodwinds, horn, piano and strings. The piece is cast in an undefined, organic variation form on a semitone motif – a fantasy, if you will – and in a single movement, which moves from very literal, purposeful music to that so ethereal it evaporates. Fagerlund draws unusual eloquence from his solo instrument and always gives it the space it needs; the piece’s general sense of distillation is one of its most distinguishing and beautiful features. Again, the playing is full of nuance and delicacy.

The original version of Sky was written for a baroque ensemble of 10 musicians in 2008, adapted for modern instruments the year after and revised altogether in 2023 as Sky II. It’s unlike later Fagerlund in its minimalist allusions, in which a process of gentle metamorphosis is drawn out from a minimalist drive, which leads to a communal folk dance. On the surface it may not have the interest of the other two works here but Fagerlund’s music is so often more than it seems at first – even if, at first, it already appears mightily rich and convincing.