BIS’s extensive coverage of Sally Beamish continues with a disc of orchestral music largely written during 2003 07. The programme is framed by two concertos, of which The Singing was inspired by traditional Celtic music and Gaelic singing that survived the effects of the Highland Clearances through to the present. After the steady growth then dispersal of energy in the first movement is a sequence of variations on a bagpipe lament, whose cumulative intensity spills into a finale that casts the main thematic ideas in a more affirmative light. James Crabb is audibly equal to the demands of the accordion part, as is Håkan Hardenberger in the Trumpet Concerto. Here the reflection on aspects of city life in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities gives rise to a three-movement format – the ‘coming to life’ of the Prelude being followed by an alternately suave and insinuating ‘dance parade’, before the finale evokes urban rough and tumble via an array of percussion then a heady cadenza which presages the closing uproar.

Composed for viola and arranged for alto saxophone, Under the Wing of the Rock tells of compassion in the aftermath of the Glencoe Massacre – its underlying plangency to the fore in Branford Marsalis’s playing – while A Cage of Doves took its cue from George Mackay Brown’s novel Magnus and highlights Beamish’s orchestration at its most imaginative. Very different is Reckless (2012), an effervescent curtain-raiser written for the young professionals of the Southbank Sinfonia. Stylish and committed playing from the Scottish orchestras under Martyn Brabbins, with vividly immediate sound and pertinent notes by the composer. Those yet to become acquainted with Beamish’s orchestral music should certainly start here.