With the London Symphony Orchestra often playing like some commanding and relentless force of nature, Sir Simon Rattle steered two mighty avalanches of Nordic sound into a concert of granitic authority last night. However, I suspect that many people will have left a packed Barbican thinking most of the uncanny winter wonderland that separated these two mountainous symphonies.

Think of Karen "MØ" Andersen and you may well picture one of her smash hit videos. "Lean On", for instance, where the singer gyrates to a Bollywood/ house mashup. Or "Kamikaze" set in post-apocalyptic Ukraine. Yet, for all the Zeitgeist-y imagery what really made those songs so popular was really just simple youthful exuberance. "Forever Neverland" sounds like it should offer much of the same. Instead, it feels curiously grown-up.

MØ, it would seem, has moved in from her recent incarnation as the singer of Diplo pop songs. Diplo - the producer responsible for both "Lean On" and "Kamikaze" - only appears, here, on one song: "Sun in Our Eyes", a sweet slice of Balearic electro-pop. Still, if the superstar DJ is largely absent, his influence remains, mixed in with some of MØ's typical Scandinavian quirkiness.

The results feature some real nuggets. Top of the pile are "Mercy" and "Blur" both of which hark back to MØ's indie roots. The former is a particular gem -  a slow-burning torch song that finds the singer at the peak of her vocal prowess. The elasticity of her voice, and her dynamic range is on a par with technical mistresses like Sia and Adele. "Blur" is much grungier with Graham Coxon-style acoustic guitars, and a languid melody.

MØ's voice also shines through on many of the electronic numbers. The best are the least self-conscious. "Beautiful Wreck" has a catchy electro-pop vibe, featuring a cool bass vocoder effect. "Red Wine" couldn't come as more of a contrast. Its Ace-of-Base-reggae-style is so wilfully uncool it's hard not to love it.

It's only where the album starts to take itself too seriously that things begin to drag. "It's All Over" featuring the usually irrepressible Charli XCX, sounds strangely po-faced. There are also a handful of tracks, such as "I Want You", where slick production seems to have been favoured over quality tunes. Of course, you have to admire MØ's decision not to include earlier hit singles initially intended for the LP in the finished version. But it makes the quality a little uneven. Then again, who still listens to albums all the way through, anyway? There's more than enough material here to confirm the Danish singer as not only one of the most interesting artists of her generation but also one of the best singers.

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@russcoffey

Overleaf: MØ's lyric video for "Blur"

Norwegian-Danish singer Live Foyn Friis (for English-speaking readers, Live is her first name) has released six albums, and leads several different ensembles, scattered intriguingly across the divide between jazz and pop. Her voice is recognisably Nordic, with an ethereal quality that expresses yearning, in particular.

In the 1990s, which brought us Morse, Fitz and Jane Tennison, an idea took root that all television detectives must be mavericks. They needed to be moody, dysfunctional, addictive, a bit of an unsolved riddle. These British sleuths were all variations on a glum theme but the scriptwriters knew the limits. Make them suffer, but don’t put them through hell.

Hans Abrahamsen String Quartets No. 1-4 Arditti String Quartet (Winter & Winter)

In the previous couple of episodes, some light began to seep into the subterranean gloom of the Copenhagen kidnappers, or at any rate onto their identities and motivations. The military theme with which Below the Surface opened, with Philip Norgaard (Johannes Lassen) being battered to a pulp by his captors somewhere in the Middle East, was proving to be the key to the mystery, as Norgaard himself suspected from early on.

Axel Borup-Jørgensen: Marin Danish National Symphony Orchestra/Thomas Sôndergård (OUR Recordings)

Read Adam Sweeting's review of the Below the Surface Finale

Colours had meanings for Emil Nolde. “Yellow can depict happiness and also pain. Red can mean fire, blood or roses; blue can mean silver, the sky or a storm.” As the son of a German-Frisian father and a Schleswig-Dane mother, Nolde was raised in a pious household on the windswept flat land on the border on Germany and Denmark that his family farmed.

Danish director Martin Zandvliet brilliantly explores a little-known episode in 1945 when more than 2,000 German POWs were forced to clear almost two million land mines that had been buried on the beaches of the west coast of Denmark in anticipation of an Allied invasion. Many of these POWS were schoolboys who had been conscripted in the final year of the war when the Nazis were desperate for soldiers. 

Roland Møller plays a Danish sergeant who has spent the war fighting with the British (he still wears Parachute regiment uniform). He now has the task of overseeing 14 German teenagers who must crawl on their bellies, inch by inch, over the beach at Skallingen in search of sand-smothered bombs. His loathing for the Germans who had occupied his country is palpable. His initial treatment of the young POWs is brutal – as is his exasperation with his superiors who have sent exhausted, malnourished youths to perform such a difficult task.

The film is beautifully shot by Camilla Hjelm Knudsen in desaturated colour. She uses mainly hand-held camerawork to portray not only the nerve-racking process of finding the landmines but also the evolving relationships between the POWs, a local mother and child, and their sergeant. There are a few atmospheric wide shots and the occasional aerial drone captures the deadly beauty of the beach (the historic location) but mainly Knudsen keeps us focused on the boys’ and their sergeant’s faces.

There’s something of August Sander’s wartime photography and even echoes of Rembrandt portraiture in the way she lights her subjects. Aided by subtle sound desigh and a skillfully deployed score, the result is wholly immersive. Slowly the Germans stop being an amorphous squad and become individuals, each with their own story. Slowly the sergeant evolves, too. Roland Møller served time in prison for assault and only became an actor in his late 30s but his performance here as the embittered sergeant is on a par with Mads Nikkelsen's best work.

Oscar-nominated, this Danish-German co-production caused considerable controversy in Denmark. The director was accused of being unpatriotic in his depiction of this moment in Danish history. Zandvliet (who also wrote the original script based on his research with amateur historians) deals with the complexities of post-war revenge and responsibility. POWs were forced to walk over mines, with locals picnicking while they watched them detonate. There’s a question about whether Denmark violated the Geneva Convention by forcing POWs to perform such dangerous work.

Originally titled Under the Sand, the only crude aspect of this extraordinarily tense drama is its punning English-language title. In its bomb disposal sequences, Land of Mine is up there with The Hurt Locker and The Small Back Room. Reminiscent of the work of Claire Denis and Michael Haneke, this is a great film about the chaotic aftermath of World War II and the moral ambiguities of revenge when the remaining enemy are the hapless teen soldiers left behind. The DVD extras include short interviews with the director, producers and key actors; more documentary historical material would have been welcome. 

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@saskiabaron

Overleaf: watch the trailer for Land of Mine