Swedish music naturally takes centre stage in this admiring ‘letter’ from the musicians of the Orchestre de Paris to Herbert Blomstedt, the illustrious senior figure among conductors today, and an incomparable master of sound.

Bruckner’s only major chamber music piece, his Quintet (with two violas) is a score of quasi-symphonic logic, characterised by an audacity and complex polyphony that mirror the speculative depth of Beethoven’s last quartets. Curiously considered ‘too serious’ at its premiere in 1889, Nielsen’s Quartet in G minor in fact radiates balance and freshness.

Reaching far beyond its liturgical function, the art harmonium is an instrument with a rich sound which Sibelius used in his Quartet in G minor, a piece in a single movement based on a theme as lilting as it is warm, followed by superb pieces by other compatriots of Herbert Blomstedt: a small trio by composer Helena Munktell (1852-1919), who studied in France with Vincent d'Indy, and the quartet by Carl Wilhelm Eugen Stenhammar (1871-1927), a pianist and conductor who was himself influenced by Bruckner and Nielsen.