There’s a lot going on here. Henning Kraggerud’s four concertos (‘Afternoon’, ‘Evening’, ‘Night’ and ‘Morning’) of six movements are reflections on the world’s time zones, each allocated a different key. Kraggerud follows the circle of fifths in major and minor. So, the ‘Afternoon’ Concerto moves from the ‘straightforward’ C major of ‘Greenwich’ (the first movement) to the ‘ghostlike’ D minor of ‘Prague’, the ‘light and airy’ F major of ‘Alexandria’ and so on (Kraggerud’s descriptors). The booklet note by Kraggerud and the Norwegian novelist-philosopher Jostein Gaarder blends analysis with a fantastical narrative in which a protagonist has 24 hours in Greenwich before being told whether or not he has Alzheimer’s disease. There is reference to each concerto acting as a ‘postlude’ to a text by Gaarder, but what text isn’t clear (a web search hints at a stage production). We’re also to consider Rita Steblin’s book A History of Key Characteristics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries.

Got all that? Good – you’re ready for the music, which is as simple and direct as the project is complex and elusive. The writing is streamlined (the longest movement is 5'32"), resolutely tonal, peppered with neo-Baroque gameplay and some obvious geographical signposting but generally neat and secure, though it’s telling how quickly Kraggerud withdraws from the rigorous contrapuntal challenge he sets himself in ‘The Aral Sea’. Ultimately the music is derivative, inoffensive but inconclusive – think classic European string miniatures with the spice of Lisa Batiashvili’s Tsintsadze. Kraggerud’s playing is evocative (his violin sounds almost like an oriental flute in ‘Mary’s Igloo’ – like nearly all the locations, I’ve never been there) and the Arctic Philharmonic provide a warm, capable cushion underneath him. File under ‘curiosity’.