Composed between 2010 and 2014, as commissions from orchestras such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony, the works recorded here testify to the widespread international interest in the music of the Swedish composer Anders Hillborg. Two purely orchestral works, Beast Sampler and Cold Heat, frame the brief and emotionally concentrated song O dessa ögon for soprano and strings, and demonstrate Hillborg's expert handling of the forces of the large symphony orchestra, often described by him as a 'sound animal'. They also illustrate one of his trademark compositional techniques, namely his use of a number of particular 'sonic objects' such as string glissandi, flutter-tongued flute counterpoint and dense textures of rapid and overlapping ascending scales. These, and many others, recur throughout his production in ever-changing contexts and new combinations. Sirens, the closing and culminating work on this disc, is also Hillborg’s largest work to date in terms of both scoring and duration, and its emotional depth is unmatched in his output. Inspired by the dangerous yet alluring sirens in Homer's Odyssey, Hillborg has constructed a score and libretto in which the sirens – two soprano soloists and a large mixed choir – with increasing desperation attempt to manipulate Ulysses. Performing this colourful programme is the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, one of Hillborg's faithful musical companions, joined by the sopranos Ida Falk Winland and Hannah Holgersson and two of Sweden's foremost choirs, the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir and the Swedish Radio Choir. As on a previous disc of Hillborg's music, the acclaimed Eleven Gates (BIS-1406), the performances are led by three different conductors: the eminent trio of Sakari Oramo, David Zinman and Esa-Pekka Salonen, dedicatees of the works they conduct here.

On ‘Now & Then’, their latest disc, the Danish-Swedish Sirena Recorder Quartet offers up a wide-ranging selection from their regular concert repertoire, intending to illustrate the huge variety of sounds and moods achievable by just four recorder players – admittedly playing on more than twenty (!) different recorders between them, as well as on a toy piano appearing in the Swedish composer Staffan Mossenmark’s “Childhood.” The repertoire spans from a 14th-century estampie – a renaissance dance – to Chiel Meijering's Sanctus, composed in 2003, by way of Vivaldi and Bach.

The Joint Venture Percussion Duo is made up of Rachel Xi Zhang and Laurent Warnier, who met one another while students at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. Both musicians shared an affinity for the music of Maurice Ravel, and regretted the fact that Ravel never wrote for percussion, so the duo took it upon themselves to arrange his music for their own instrument family. Inspired by Ravel’s shimmering orchestral scores and virtuosic piano writing, the Duo has arranged this entire CD which includes Ravel’s masterpieces Le Tombeau de Couperin, Ma mere l’Oye, 5 pieces enfantines, and finally the Pavane pour une infant defunte.

Also available on Blu-ray

Rossini wrote L’equivoco stravagante (‘The Curious Misunderstanding’), his first full-length opera, when he was only 19 years old. As its title suggests, the plot of this dramma giocoso offers a panoply of absurdist stagecraft with one character being led to believe that the work’s heroine is in fact a castrato trying to avoid military service. Full of his trademark buffo humour, melodious and musically buoyant, the opera ran foul of the censors and was swiftly banned, which accounts for its rarity in performances and recordings. The new edition of the score used in this production corrects numerous previous errors.