In a world of classical concept albums that talk big but just repackage the same old repertoire, this is a thrilling exception. Night and dreams might be well-trodden ground in classical music, but here the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir and Grete Pedersen make them strange and alien once again in a bold and beautiful programme of choral works by Saariaho, Xenakis, Nørgård and Lachenmann.

We talk a lot about ‘journeys’ in classical music, but the skill of this album is precisely this, that it takes the listener by the hand and guides them from Per Nørgård’s fairly earthy, comfortingly melodic Drommesange (Dream Songs) to altogether more confronting musical landscapes. So gradual is the progress from familiarity and reassurance to musical wilderness and nightmarish phantasmagoria in Xenakis’s Nuits that we’re prepared for the experimental textures and extended vocal techniques that might otherwise alienate.

It helps that the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir are so absolutely at their best here, dispatching a programme of challenging works in a variety of contrasting styles with unfussy ease, always placing musicality above self-regarding virtuosity. Take the opener, for example. Nørgård’s 15-minute work drifts with folksy casualness between different musical episodes. Melodies are simple, incapable of bearing the weight of...