• The Norwegian trumpet star Tine Thing Helseth resists boundaries in music, as long as any given work has a potential for lyricism, a hallmark of her playing. Her new album, Seraph (Lawo), with the Norwegian string group Ensemble Allegria, embraces the past – Erik Satie’s Je te veux and Francis Poulenc’s Les chemins de l’amour – and a less familiar, predominantly tonal present: the American Eric Ewazen, her fellow countryman Rolf Wallin and the Armenian Alexander Arutiunian. The Scottish composer James MacMillan’s three-movement concertino Seraph (2010) – written originally for Alison Balsom – gives the album its title, its muscularity and vigour offsetting the more immediate appeal of most of the other works.
