This new, beautifully recorded showcase of Missy Mazzoli’s music begins and ends with Dark With Excessive Bright, a concerto that started life for a double bass soloist but has here been flipped upside-down, as the American composer describes it, for violin. We hear it arranged first for orchestra (the Bergen Philharmonic with conductor James Gaffigan) and later for string quintet (with members of the Arctic Philharmonic, conducted by Tim Weiss). 

It’s music with an intoxicating, ecstatic quality, that remains in safely tonal territory but offers rich atmosphere, colour, and texture. Mazzoli originally chose the title, from Paradise Lost, because to her mind it matched the double bass sound; here it finds new meaning with Peter Herresthal’s violin glinting amid the orchestra’s darker colours. Inevitably leaner and starker, given its reduced forces, the chamber version loses the impact of this contrast.

In between come three orchestral pieces, all performed by the Arctic Philharmonic and Weiss with commitment and flair. The solar-system-inspired Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) surges and stretches, its motifs looping, its emotions turning. It’s an appealing piece, suggesting...