In 2015, pianist Jonathan Biss initiated the Beethoven/5 commissioning project with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and more than fifteen other orchestras, resulting in a groundbreaking collaboration over nine years. The project yielded five extraordinary new piano works by some of today’s most significant composers, responding to Beethoven’s own concerti. The first volume, recorded with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, features Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto and Brett Dean’s companion piece, “Gneixendorfer Musik, A Winter’s Journey”.

Leading Swedish composer Jesper Nordin’s soundscape lies at the crossroads of Swedish traditional music, rock and improvised music. On this recording, Daniel Harding and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra perform Röster (‘voices’), a trilogy whose works are each based on different kinds of Swedish music which the composer sees as being part of his background. In Åkallan (‘Invocation’), Nordin has used the traditional vocal technique called kulning as his starting point.

Swedish singer Miah Persson throws her hat into the lyric soprano ring with Sempre Libera, a selection of arias to showcase her talents, recorded live in concert. She has a sweet voice, though not saccharine, and an assured technique. Like Tebaldi, her trill is not her strength (though, unlike that soprano, at least she includes them). However the voice never opens up at the top, where it remains quite polite, and her coloratura, though fluent, is not scintillating.

‘The fantastic thing about art and music is that one can pose questions and conjure up visions at the same time.’ The words are those of the Swedish composer Jesper Nordin, who does exactly that in Emerging from Currents and Waves. A large-scale work for orchestra, clarinet soloist, conductor and live electronics, Emerging… is a collaboration between Nordin, Martin Fröst and Esa-Pekka Salonen. All three are interested in how new technology can – and will – influence art and artistic expression, and in exploring the intersection of mankind, music and technology.