Lindberg recalled, "He suggested that I use the Italian expression 'Al largo,' which means being offshore, specifically referring to that moment when you reach the open sea and you don't see the coast anymore and what is before you is vast."
He continued, "Al Largo is full of fanfares and joyous noises, but somehow its main structure falls into two halves, both of them starting very energetically and ending up as slow music.
Lindberg cited Maurice Ravel's ballet Ma mère l'Oye and Arnold Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht for string sextet as deciding influence in the piece's orchestration and composition.
He wrote, "One of my earliest ideas with regard to this project was to create a big piece, but I didn't want to use a huge orchestra since I had done that many times in the past; I wanted the work to be more constrained, played by a smaller ensemble, and a perfect masterpiece in that category is Ravel's Ma Mère l'oye (Mother Goose), which is a gorgeous piece, particularly in the way that Ravel builds up tremendous expression with smaller resources."
Reviewing the world premiere, Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times described Al largo as a "a lushly colorful, brilliantly orchestrated, teeming, intriguing yet baffling work."