Despite its geographically Scottish title, the opening movement of From Ayrshire feels more akin to the pastoral Gloucestershire of Vaughan Williams’s Lark Ascending, the violin of Linus Roth floating ethereally above placid orchestral textures. If, as MacMillan has suggested, this 2005 work is built around the Scottish melody ‘Ca’ the yowes’, it is wrapped up so heavily in the characteristic sounds of English string-writing that it is barely recognisable. The brief second movement is a dazzling exhibition of violinistic virtuosity in which Roth shows breathtaking brilliance.

Revealing rather stronger Scottish characteristics, Tuireadh (‘Lament’) was inspired by the 1988 disaster on the Piper Alpha oil rig off the Scottish coast in which 167 lives were lost. Some exceptionally committed playing from members of the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic, not least the soulful clarinet which opens this 20 minute outpouring of grief, calls to mind the traditional keening of Gaelic women when faced with a communal tragedy.

The most colourful and spirited music here, however, comes in …as others see us…, seven musical reflections of portraits of noteworthy English figures found in London’s National Portrait Gallery. I particularly like the perky, almost folksy dance associated with Henry VIII, underpinned by a growling contrabassoon and a persistently beating tabor. This presents a tune which crops up in various guises in all six movements, weird and eccentric for the Earl of Rochester, gloating in the trumpet call for the Duke of Marlborough, fussy, chattering and occasionally contemplative for Byron and Wordsworth (drawn together musically, as it were), in the style of an English hymn tune for TS Eliot and calm for the pacifist Dorothy Hodgkin. MacMillan at his most imaginative and inventive best exploring the limited resources of a chamber orchestra, these are compelling performances given particular impact under the composer’s taut direction.