Two themes emerge in this double-disc portrait of Dai Fujikura, the Japanese-born composer who studied with Péter Eötvös and George Benjamin. One is the discovery of the mythology and traditional instruments of his home country, which, he tells us, he didn’t learn about when he was growing up. The second is the idea of creating distinctive worlds. 

That might be as tangible as Wavering World, the title given to his shifting, sliding and shimmering orchestral answer to Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony, inspired by the idea of a middle earth, poised between gods and the underworld. Or it might be a concerto, a genre which Fujikura says he loves writing: “the real pleasure of writing concertos is I can create the ‘world’ which makes the best use of the characteristics of the solo instrument”.

 These two themes collide in his concertos for Shamisen and Shakuhachi. The Shamisen is a traditional three-stringed plucked instrument which is here given an electric guitar persona as it riffs energetically, against an atmospheric backdrop. The Shakuhachi is a bamboo flute, and its breathy sound carries us into a world inspired by...