This release of two works by James MacMillan was recorded live over four separate dates, The World's Ransoming captured in two takes in 2003, and The Confession of Isobel Gowdie in two takes in 2007. As is usual with these excellent (and cheap) recordings from the London Symphony Orchestra, there is little extraneous background noise, and the recording quality is of a consistent high standard. In both performances here, the orchestra's technical and interpretative intelligence remain unquestionable.

MacMillan came to the attention of the establishment when The Confession of Isobel Gowdie was premiered at the 1990 Proms. The work is a prayer for the woman of its title, who was accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake for it in the seventeenth century: the story is briefly and movingly described in the CD booklet. "This work is the Requiem that Isobel Gowdie never had," says MacMillan, and the composer opens and closes his piece with luxuriously lyrical, moving passages for strings, shaded with emotive glissandi.

At the work's centre stands music more agitated, cruelly violent; though MacMillan rejects any overt programmatic element in his booklet note, one can easily imagine the anguish of torture in this section. Someone once described the passage as "crude", but on this release, conductor Colin Davis uncovers so much detailed orchestration and phrases in such rounded paragraphs that I was fully convinced of its worth. But then Davis and the orchestra are alert to every one of this score's rainbow of possibilities, the opening stretch drawing nuanced and shimmering drones from the strings, the orchestra's climactic 13 hammer strikes shattering, the very final crescendo ear-splitting and intense. This is a diverse and dramatic score, elements of minimalism subtly incorporated into music that can threaten to look back to the rhythmic and melodic writing of Stravinsky.

The performance of MacMillan's later work The World's Ransoming, completed in 1996, is equally successful. The composition takes Maundy Thursday as its subject, and reflects on the words of a hymn of St. Thomas Aquinas, Pange lingua: the writing for solo cor anglais is extensive, and Christine Pendrill, the Principal Cor Anglais of the LSO, does a marvellous job. Her phrasing is smooth, her pure tone effectively contrasting both the orchestra's spiky percussiveness and richly resonating string blocks. Davis proudly displays MacMillan's miracles of scoring (pattering percussion, swirling high violins, triangle rattling) in his sweeping, sensuous reading, while the orchestra dignify him with an admirable density and tautness of ensemble; the sound world is seamless yet ever-changing.

This music is extraordinary, as challenging as it is ostensibly accessible, and the LSO's superb performances make this disc absolutely indispensable, especially at such a reasonable price.

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