This handsome new release brings together all of James MacMillan’s organ music to date, spanning some 36 years of composition and including three premiere recordings. Stephen Farr’s commitment to contemporary organ music is well known and he brings a compelling advocacy to this challenging programme.

The starter track, Kenga e Krushqve (2018), fuses Albanian and Scottish flavours into a highly entertaining nuptial rumba-infused hypno-romp. Equally striking is the concise three-movement St Andrews’ Suite, especially the energetic opener – a vigorous toccata – and the finale, which has a distinctly Hindemithian logic to it. Although moments of genuine calmness and serenity are few and far between, the Suite’s central panel has a distinctively pastoral lilt and the spacious, floaty Offertorium (1986) offers a pleasing mix of Caledonian folksiness and peaceful unhurriedness, aided by some delicious shimmering strings at the conclusion.

A MacMillan programme will always contain some grittier, tougher fare. Gaudeamus in loci pace (1998) melds plainsong with birdsong chirpings in a polytonal maze. The most substantial and taxing work on the disc, Le tombeau de Georges Rouault (2003), will take several auditions for all its ingredients to fall into place. This is a veritable audio pantomime, chock-full of sharply etched contrasts: a playful hint here of the big top, perhaps; a recurring twisted incipit from Fučik’s Entry of the Gladiators possibly? Gargoyles leer, demonic reed stops sneer, the whole heady mix totters towards a cataclysmic collapse at 9'40". Needless to say, Stephen Farr makes light work of its immense technical and interpretative challenges.

The Meditation (2010) draws on material from MacMillan’s Strathclyde Motet Qui meditabitur, its contrapuntal writing elaborating most satisfactorily before building to a mighty climax. Boundless energy and clarity of texture characterise the most recent work on the disc, the Toccata (2019), with the 1992 Rieger instrument displaying all its sparkling colours. Here MacMillan concocts a scintillating whirligig of tumbling figurations, contrasting dance with plainsong in a dramatic tour de force. Adam Binks’s engineering is well-nigh perfect, as is Stephen Farr’s immaculate playing.