As Jane Manning has been to London's new music, so more recently Irene Drummond to Scotland's, her bright vocal timbre and agile movement the inspiration for many composers. This collection is of songs Drummond has commissioned, premiered or championed...Iain Burnside shares the credit for performances of total focus.

That the range of recent Scottish song is a wide one can hardly be doubted on hearing this disc from Irene Drummond...Unfailingly attentive accompaniment from Iain Burnside and spacious but always focused sound further enhance a most desirable disc.

The byword here is diversity, from the gratifying immediacy of James MacMillan’s Soutar Settings to Edward McGuire’s uncompromisingly modernist The Web...Irene Drummond sings endearingly, although sometimes her expressive restraint borders on reticence; and, at the piano, Iain Burnside handles everything with aplomb and insight.

This new and magnificent collection of contemporary Scots song on the Delphian label – with soprano Irene Drummond at her most breathtakingly stellar and seductive, along with the astonishingly perceptive pianist Iain Burnside – is a compelling demonstration of the care and quality our finest composers lavish on creating works which sustain and enrich that tradition.