The Scottish composer Oliver Iredale Searle (b1977) has a clearly defined line in evocative, often exotic titles, which give his unfailingly accessible postmodern music a pleasingly personal tone. The works included here range far and wide geographically, and the expert wind players of the RSNO, plus flautist Carla Rees, are recorded with a vividness that adds greatly to the atmospheric effect. At one extreme, topics are nothing if not local – Dalriada (An Argyll Suite) references those parts of Western Scotland and Northern Ireland that formed an ancient Gaelic kingdom. By contrast, Pilgrim of Curiosity links Scotland, America and the Far East with movement titles such as ‘Millport Godzilla’, ‘Illinois Acceptance’ and, to conclude, ‘Salamat Tinggal’ – apparently ‘goodbye’ in Malay. Arresting though such titles are, their air of private association could leave listeners not in on the allusions rather at a loss. Fortunately, Sam Ellis’s detailed booklet notes explain the contexts, including the plural ‘Hopes’ in the piece for Baroque flute: it’s a reservoir in the Lammermuir Hills.

The overt internationalism of Pilgrim of Curiosity relates to research in which Searle has collaborated with a printmaker and a choreographer, a project discussed at length online. The music is presumably meant to stand on its own as well as being part of a multimedia experience, but opinions will be divided over the extent to which Searle was justified in settling on a uniformly euphonious, folk-tinged idiom as one style that suits all, and from which explicit orientalisms and other ‘exotic’ allusions are excluded.

Though understandable in itself, and in keeping with current sensibilities, the effect across the eight movements of Pilgrim of Curiosity is overly constrained in character. Despite the care taken by the players to emphasise the contrasts between dancelike rhythms and more reflective material, a few outbursts of something more dramatic and even disruptive would have been welcome in a score of such generous proportions. Dalriada manages a more satisfying and bracing response to its Scottish/Irish environments and to the often destructive aspects of the natural world that impinge on them. No less bracing, despite its pious title, Faith, Hopes and Charity is a febrile toccata that never settles into simple lyricism. Best of all, Snowbirds has an almost Janáček-like spontaneity and energy, with an appropriate range of moods and motifs convincingly linked together over its nine minutes. It sounds as if, as a species, snowbirds – not birds at all but North Americans ‘who migrate towards warmer climes in winter’ – can be aggressive as well as agile, but the trajectory of Searle’s music charts a satisfying progression from initial agitation to ultimate calm.