Long-time Scottish resident, composer Sally Beamish was inspired by the warmth and sunshine of California in her radiant, Beethoven-influenced Second String Quartet, Opus California, combining humour, drama and vivid musical portraits of the Golden Gate Bridge and the beautiful Natural Bridges State Beach.

The remarkable Edinburgh-born, US-resident Thea Musgrave is one of Scotland's most revered composers, whose music brims with compelling drama. Her 1988 orchestral work The Seasons aligns the changing year with a human lifetime, from the destruction of autumn to icy winter, hopeful birdsong-filled spring to joyful summer.

Felix Mendelssohn composed his First String Quartet in 1829 at the age of just 20, and set out to demonstrate to the world the drama and operatic intensity he was capable of. One of his violinists steps out of the ensemble almost as an operatic soloist, and the fairy music of the second movement might have come straight from his A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Like an ancient rite for the dead, an outpouring of grief and hopeful consolation, Tuireadh (Gaelic for 'lament') is one of the most powerful works by Scotland's greatest living composer, written as a memorial for the victims of the 1988 Piper Alpha disaster. Its gripping music moves from anguished fury to luminous compassion in a piece that never fails to move the listener.