Bára Gísladóttir (b. 1989) considers sounds, instruments, and ensembles as living organisms. In COR, Hringla, and VAPE, the Icelandic composer and double bassist engages with the largest musical organism of all: the symphony orchestra. Inspired by death metal or techno as much as by Scelsi or Penderecki, the foreboding atmosphere of her music is cut through with irony, puns, and black humor. After all, organisms themselves – especially human bodies – contain the potential for both comic excess and self-annihilation. In these three works, we follow Gísladóttir’s fascination with language and coincidence; we hear an uncompromising interrogation of the body’s excesses and ailments; and, most of all, we see life, vaporous and between states, neither dark nor light.

Anders Koppel’s borderless view of music has taken in everything from psychedelic rock to world music and avant-garde concert pieces. But his gregarious musical aesthetic has found a special home in the world of the instrumental concerto, a genre whose exchange of energies continues to inspire him. Three of Koppel's most charming concertos are heard here in new recordings from the musicians who inspired them and the Danish Sinfonietta, that commissioned and first performed them.

On the eight solo improvisations that make up Dark Radiance, percussionist, performance artist and composer Ying-Hsueh Chen takes listeners on a journey through subtle musical movements that meticulously weave the past into the present in a remarkable manner. Nearly every piece is devoted to a single instrument, and each, for the most part, emerges from a single musical gesture or action, creating sounds from the thunderous to the delicate without overpowering or losing them.

With the establishment of Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens in 1843, the Danish composer and conductor Hans Christian Lumbye (1810–1874) swiftly rose to fame as the city’s internationally acclaimed king of waltzes and galops, leading his orchestra from the violin. For this recording, Lars Ulrik Mortensen and Concerto Copenhagen – Scandinavia’s leading period instruments ensemble – studied Lumbye’s original scores and used instruments from the era to recreate an authentic sound. This collection showcases Lumbye’s enchanting music, along with popular pieces by Bellman, Lanner and Strauss I.

Bára Gísladóttir wrote VÍDDIR to mark the end of her studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. The title of the piece translates as ’dimensions’, and from its first sounds of five bass flautists screaming, ‘as strong as possible’, into their instruments, it is clear that VÍDDIR is not a light-hearted leap into a new life. It is a black night of a piece. An abyss, into which Gísladóttir has dived and reached deeply. An unbroken hour in length, it returns again and again to its own dark light.

On this newest endeavour, the Bogotá Philharmonic Orchestra, under the direction of Joachim Gustafsson, turns its attention towards Danish composer August Enna (1859–1939) with renderings of two of his charming orchestral works. Traces of several elements from Enna’s musical life converge in the Violin Concerto: his background as a violinist and his deep connection to opera meet the tradition of Nordic national romanticism. While Symphony No. 2 may be considered conservative for its era, it is abundantly rich in its continuous melodic flow, creating an immediately impactful experience.

There is an evaporating quality to the music of Icelandic composer and conductor Daníel Bjarnason, with sounds that can start softly or loudly, serenely or fiercely, but ultimately dissipate into intangible air. This album, conducted by the composer himself, showcases this characteristic in three captivating works in all-new versions. In Bow to String, the three movements undergo a mesmerizing transformation from a pounding passacaglia to an exhale of frozen breath. In Over Light Earth, the sounds tremble before dispersing to the far edges of the orchestra. And in the Larkin Songs, Bjarnason reflects on fleeting companionship and love.