Formed in 2012, the well-regarded Swedish bassist Lars Danielsson's Liberetto band's pastoral jazz signature was writ all over 2021's Cloudland – a project that the celebrated bassist has very recently taken on tour.

He's been closely allied with the high profile German ACT label who have been fully nurturing his creative talent since 2004. He's no stranger to working with symphony orchestras either and on Symphonized, Danielsson fully embraces his background in concert music that is focussed on baroque through to romantic/impressionism. He goes the whole hog, so to speak, with his widescreen arrangements for the 79-piece Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra.

Symphonized, as the title suggests, offers a large-scale orchestral canvas, and a very silky smooth, lush one it is too. With its largely unambiguous use of minor/major tonality, the writing in the first half is partly reminiscent of large-scale orchestral film scores from the likes of John Barry and Michel Legrand. Inflexions from Swedish modal folk song are also present and the Esbjörn Svensson Trio might come to mind as you listen to Danielsson's ‘Lviv’ – note that EST's Magnus Öström is the drummer here. Yet it sounds something like an old-school orchestral Hollywood soundtrack, without a film to give it context. Jazz as freedom principle rather than style with solos – pianist Grégory Privat's are particularly effusive – rising from the tide of the epic oceanic sweep of the orchestra rather than offering an alternative dimension to the music which was more the point of the ‘Third Stream’. The Cor Anglais is featured throughout but in a central role in the second half for the pastoral 'Double Concerto for English Horn' commissioned originally for orchestra in 2017. More Classic than Jazz FM material, it's lacking the sound of surprise. Yet it's easy to get lost in the recording's pretty, affecting ambience, if you allow it to that is.