In his new Scandinavia-centric album, Felix Klieser and the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Jamie Phillips, present two contemporary concertos for horn and orchestra. Soundscape – A Walk in Colours by Swedish composer Rolf Martinsson (b. 1956) was commissioned for Felix Klieser and was premiered in 2022. Martinsson describes Soundscape as a single-movement concerto divided into five distinct sections, beginning with a dramatic opening that transitions into a slower section, where the soloist and orchestra engage in a thematic dialogue. The music shifts into a tranquil soundscape before launching into a long aria for horn in the fourth section, and a return to the dramatic opening themes in the fifth.

The second centerpiece concerto is by another Swedish composer, Kurt Atterberg (1887-1974). The work is characterized by late-Romantic melodies and virtuoso passages in the high register of the instrument.

Two short, crowd-pleasing Nordic selections round out the album: Solveig’s Song by Edvard Grieg and Sibelius’s The Swan of Tuonela, originally scored for English horn soloist, but translated by Klieser for his own instrument.