Nigel Osborne's new work for the City of London festival embraces the event's focus on 60 degrees north with as much wholeheartedness as if he had thought of the theme himself. But it is also something very personal. Seven Words, Seven Icons, Seven Cities is a kind of aural photo album: seven miniatures for strings and choir, drawing on memories of when Osborne worked on Baltic ships as a young man, where he would see the grimy, industrial side of the landscape as well as its mythical, natural aspects as evoked in the ancient texts he uses.

The words, in all kinds of old Nordic languages as well as a smattering of English, barely register. But it doesn't matter: Osborne's impressions are just that, fleeting visions rather than specific scenes, and Angelica Kroeger and Cathie Boyd's images, projected behind the choir, were generic enough not to impose on them.

St Petersburg and Tallinn evoke those cities in shifting clusters, with the barest nod to Orthodox chant; Helsinki is over in a flash of buzzing bows. London brings the noisiest episode, and the longest, but even this setting of an Anglo-Saxon riddle does not outstay its welcome.

Concision is not now a defining characteristic of James MacMillan's music, and it wasn't back in 1993, when he wrote his Seven Last Words from the Cross. These, too, are intended as meditations. But, as so often in his religious works, MacMillan saddles the beauty of his music with a hectoring tone that leaves no room for personal reflection.

Under Nigel Short, the singers of Tenebrae sounded so vibrant at full volume that one wished we had been able to hear them in a real masterpiece, as we had the strings of the Scottish Ensemble in a muscular, moving and, yes, meditiative performance of Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony, under their leader Jonathan Morton.

The festival continues until 7 August. Details: www.colf.org