Since the Norwegian Radio Orchestra regularly plays at the concert celebrating the award of the Nobel Peace Prize, outgoing chief conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya has chosen to bring together music from five continents as the orchestra’s own contribution to world peace. Nine composers are represented, nearly all of whom will be largely unknown outside (and often inside) their respective countries. The music, however, rarely celebrates anything overtly connected with their native countries, and only one of the works might be said to evoke genuine peace.

South African Robert Fokkens sets things in motion with the disc’s title-piece, Uhambo Olunintsi (‘Journeys’), and music that often explodes into something quite violent. But it is a most effective and stimulating piece, which shows off the orchestra to particularly good effect. Despite the relative peacefulness of its opening, Slovakian composer L’ubica Čekovská’s Shadow Scale also turns pretty violent and pushes the Norwegian violinists to their limit. Even the title of Canadian composer Harry Stafylakis’s Brittle Fracture suggests an absence of peace; and the piece, for all its interesting instrumental effects, reinforces this.

With Nahla Farouk Mattar we move to the Middle East. This is a hugely atmospheric concerto-like work for two xylophones and orchestra but apart from its title – El-Áin (‘The Evil Eye’) – there is little to suggest the composer’s native Egypt. Each composer has provided a short note on their work; but while Carlos Zamora’s refers to his native Chile, Sikuris is more notable for its decidedly Coplandesque central episode. In both his terse note and the title of his work, Gravitas, New Zealand composer Chris Gendall gives few hints that this is, in fact, a highly effective essay in orchestral colour. The only work on the disc with a direct political association is Pendulum, Evaporation by Aigerim Seilova. Written for the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Germany and Israel – from a neutral perspective; Seilova is from Kazakhstan – it opens with a solo cello (assertively played by Audun André Sandvik) which reveals most of the ideas that reappear later in this somewhat fragmented piece.

Chen Zhangyi is one of the generation of Singaporean composers born since the country’s independence. From his tiny native island, he has looked to the vast expanses of space for inspiration, and of an ethereal symphony oozes peace, awe and wide-eyed wonder. In its all-embracing expansiveness and sense of mankind’s insignificance, it places itself right at the heart of Harth-Bedoya’s vision, and is also about the most impressive piece on this disc.

If Zhangyi looked up from his native land to the infinite wideness of space, Miguel del Águila had his eyes firmly focused on the often turbulent history of Uruguay, which he likens to a Giant Guitar, ‘friendly, sentimental, nostalgic, apparently weak, and yet concealing a great power’. It dances along fervently, building to an explosion of noise topped by wailing sirens which, as the composer puts it, are ‘quickly crushed by the overwhelming percussion’.