Setting poetry by ee cummings is no easy task for any composer and Daniel Asia has chosen some exceptionally challenging texts here – the third and fourth of his set Purer than Purest Pure, for example, in which words are deconstructed and reconstructed and apparently visually split between voices. The solution is to split such things between real voices, and the BBC Singers are of course adept at this, making what is in effect vocal Klangfarbenmelodie sound as natural as breathing. The cycle ends with the deceptively simple “purer than purest pure”, in which Asia manages to suggest a kind of dissonant shape-note singing. What it doesn’t do, musically, is reach any kind of apotheosis, or gentle winding down – I find the repetition of the final phrase unconvincing.

More generally, Asia doesn’t strike me as being a fundamentally melodic composer: his approach is definitely textural, often declamatory, as the other two cummings sets here and the Paul Pines cycle also show, and as one might guess from the composer’s early love for Ligeti’s Requiem and Lux aeterna, mentioned in the booklet-notes. That interest is especially and avowedly apparent in the textless Sounds Shapes and, especially, the extended Why (?) Jacob, certainly the most interesting and consistently satisfying works in this anthology. The recording, made in St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge, captures the excellent performances very well indeed.