Recordings of Judith Weir’s music have tended to focus either on her operas or her chamber music, so this disc of orchestral works (with or without voices), excellently performed and recorded, is something of a revelation. In instrumental composition, Weir the story-teller becomes Weir the painter, and images of the natural world are celebrated with an often hymnic fervour.

Heroic Strokes of the Bow (1991-92) has fervour to spare, though it’s the exception in relating to a painting (by Paul Klee) rather than to landscape or climate. Its forceful presence spans allusions to heroic music from Beethoven to (at least) Sibelius, and Weir’s trademark incisiveness is never more tangible than in the brilliantly effective timpani-writing. Forest (1995) has a warmer feel to it, hinting at the stateside vigour of Copland or Adams as well as evoking Tippett’s “magic wood” (The Midsummer Marriage). Repetitions reinforce the composer’s concern with communicability, but for me both Forest and the tightly knit choral setting of Emily Dickinson’s Moon and Star (1995) are less fully rounded achievements than Natural History (1998).

This is a four-movement cycle setting texts, devised by Weir from Chinese parables, which feature strange characters and disconcerting events. Central to its success is the balance achieved between rapturously lyrical vocal lines and the active, edgy but never overwhelming orchestral music. Tackling music originally written for Dawn Upshaw, Ailish Tynan bravely rises to some very high challenges. After the often surrealistic depiction of nature in Natural History, The Welcome Arrival of Rain (2001-02), suggested by the Indian monsoon, seems determinedly down to earth. More echoes of Tippett here – the percussion riffs of his last orchestral piece The Rose Lake – but Weir’s way of celebrating nature’s bounty is wholly her own, the varied repetitions of strong contrasts which generate the form perfectly judged.