In his piano works, Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen manages to unite tradition with innovation. The centrepiece of this collection, an extensive piano sonata, reveals his musical imagination in all its unrestrained complexity and introspection. These works, spanning several years, showcase Olesen playing with form, wrestling with artistic crises, and grappling with seemingly irreconcilable contrasts. The 6 Sonatas playfully reinvent classical forms, while the Small Miracle Prelude ingeniously reimagines Bach – performed by British pianist Rolf Hind, a specialist in 20thand 21st-century music.

Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen brings together two of his great orchestral works from the 2010s, Der Wind bläset wo er will and his Cello Concerto, on his third release for Dacapo Records. Olesen's amazing music is about life and being alive: each piece is a world unto itself. Recorded by cellist Johannes Moser and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Otto Tausk.

The premiere of The Picture of Dorian Gray took place on 22 August 2013 at Concert Hall Aarhus and was seen everywhere as one of the big events in Danish musical life. The Danish National Opera was not unfamiliar with the idea of venturing beyond the ordinary. In particular the complete production of Richard Wagner’s demanding The Ring of the Nibelung in 1987 had placed Denmark’s second-largest city on the musical world map. But when former opera director Giordano Bellincampi took up the challenge of The Picture of Dorian Gray a decade and a half later, it almost seemed a rash decision. He said yes to a music drama by a young composer with no experience of other operas; indeed, a music drama based on Oscar Wilde’s most controversial novel – and with no singers on the stage!