Fifty last year, Kimmo Hakola is an exact contemporary of Magnus Lindberg, and like his fellow Finn he was part of that astonishingly talented generation of musicians that also included Salonen and Saariaho, who all studied at the Helsinki Conservatory in the late 1970s. Yet Hakola's music has so far not established itself internationally in the way that Lindberg and Saariaho's has done, partly because his output has been uneven, but also because his music is impossible to pigeonhole. The Piano Concerto, first performed in 1996, was the piece that defined Hakola's maverick tendencies. It's a huge work, in nine movements lasting 55 minutes, and running through a whole array of styles, from generic international modernism to neo-romantic gestures, via all kind of references to popular and world musics. Atonality rubs shoulders with blamelessly diatonic passages, and over-the-top flamboyance (sometimes very close to John Adams's early Grand Pianola Music) is juxtaposed with music that selects its pitches like Morton Feldman. It's hugely enjoyable, and the solo is dashingly well played by Henri Sigfridsson. A very worthwhile disc.

...this is a monumental work, whose huge dynamic shifts are signalled by section titles such as "Furioso", "Forza" and "Triste", with subtle ethnic touches like the klezmer flavour to the clarinet in "Fuoco" balanced by the occasional use of electronic keyboard tones. But it's a gruelling experience.

A reluctant modernist, Hakola laces sci-fi chords with odd flourishes of wit and splashes of Romanticism. A lyrical oboe solo springs from nowhere, to be followed by the astral shimmer of tuned percussion.