It seems impossible that it is 52 years since Underwear, Bobo Stenson's debut album on ECM, appeared, marking the beginning of his collaboration with producer Manfred Eicher that continues to the present. The current trio, with Jormin and Fält, has been recording for the label since Cantando, in 2008. This session – made at Lugano's Italian-Swiss radio studio – catches the immediacy of a group that approaches every session afresh, yet demonstrates years of shared understanding of one another's playing. Eicher also continues to believe in the album as an overall form, building records with his artists that tell a story from track to track. This is a fine example, from the delicate opening piano phrases of ‘You Shall Plant a Tree’, to the echo-like reprise of the piece at the close of the disc.

Unlike 2018's Contra la Indecision, their previous album, Sphere has relatively few originals by the band, just two new pieces and one arrangement by Jormin, including a tribute to Charles Ives. Instead, thematic and harmonic ideas are mainly drawn from the works of various Scandinavian classical composers, including (from across the Baltic) a very abstract reworking of Sibelius’ ‘Valsette’ (opus 40, no. 1). The eventual arrival of the full theme is ushered in by arco bass harmonics, a scattering of percussion, and ghostly, delicate fragments of the familiar melody passing between the piano and bass. This typifies a powerful introspective album that draws us into a world of intense mutual concentration, with many moments of astonishing lyrical beauty. At its core is a ravishing reworking of Sven-Erik Bäck's ‘Communion Psalm’, its opening right-hand piano figures catching the essence of choral phrasing, before a deft bass solo ushers in some of the trio's best collective work on the album.