The Berserking, a piano concerto dating from 1989 (just before James MacMillan attracted wider public attention with The Confession of Isobel Gowdie) is, according to the composer, a study in ‘misdirected energy’ and the first movement is pervaded by ‘something pathetically masculine’. Developmentally, its vigour may be futile and misdirected, but it is undeniably exciting. After the shimmering slow movement, the butch blustering takes over temporarily (in this third movement Martin Roscoe and MacMillan are quicker, more athletic, yet less violent, than Peter Donohoe and Markus Stenz on a now deleted RCA disc) but the piece ends with a lyrical, hopeful vision of serenity outlined by piano, celesta and harp.

Britannia is an eventful tour through familiar and familiar-sounding tunes that collide and morph and chase each other in a gaudy, exhilarating mêlée; it would have done Charles Ives credit. Like Ives, MacMillan is partly concerned with celebrating a culture enriched by varied ethnic elements, but he also invites us to consider when pride in our own traditions tips over into xenophobia, triumphalism and bigotry. The march from Elgar’s Cockaigne gets a drubbing, and God Save the Queen is jostled rudely by Knees Up, Mother Brown.

Into the Ferment dramatises Burns’s Willie Brew'd a Peck o'Maut with trombones personifying three youths who cement their friendship in an evening of drunken revelry, giving MacMillan the chance to have some bravura fun with jigs and reels.