The indispensable label NMC, which specialises in music of living British composers, is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a flurry of releases and a new partnership with the Hallé. This John Casken recording, which coincides with a free download of his Apollinaire's Bird, is the first fruit. As so often in Casken's evocative but rigorous music, the inspiration for Orion Over Farne (1984-86) is Northumberland – the Farne Islands – as well as Greek myth. The other works, the Violin Concerto (1995), with Sophia Jaffé a rhapsodic and dazzling soloist, and the exuberant, multifaceted Concerto for Orchestra (2007), make for a disc of vitality and contrast, expertly played by the Hallé under Markus Stenz.