I first encountered Britta Byström’s music on Phono Suecia’s fascinating CD (‘Persuasion’, from her 2004 orchestral piece after Jane Austen) that featured works written between 1996 and 2007. This new disc contains three more recent works. Earliest is Picnic at Hanging Rock (2010), which Byström styles a tone-poem, drawing its inspiration from Peter Weir’s iconic film. It is a beguilingly scored orchestral work, strong on atmosphere (like Weir’s film), with fantastical orchestration that makes it a study in timbre. The piece won the Christ Johnson Prize in 2012.

Byström’s music is much involved with the nature of sound and if there is a criticism of Picnic at Hanging Rock it is that her attention to detail sacrifices a little in terms of structure. Despite being of similar size, this is a failing neither of the other works here exhibit. The viola concerto A Walk After Dark (2013) is a superbly scored and cogently argued work in six sections, playing continuously, where form and content are held in a nice balance. Dedicated to the memory of her former teacher, Anders Eliasson (1947-2013), A Walk After Dark is full of psychological light and shadow. So, too, is Invisible Cities (2013), inspired by Calvino’s novel, its recurring piano refrain – lifted from Lutosawski’s Jeux vénitiens – a guiding light through the work’s 11 sections, several of which have a haunting nocturnal feel.

Daniel Blendulf directs three splendidly committed accounts from the Malmö and Swedish Radio Symphony orchestras, and Ellen Nisbeth – for whom A Walk After Dark was written – is a model soloist. Daphne’s sound is excellent and so is this disc.