George Benjamin’s 36-minute “lyric tale” Into the Little Hill taps into the rich vein of English music theatre stemming from Benjamin Britten’s church parables, Alexander Goehr’s Triptych and Harrison Birtwistle’s smaller-scale dramas, such as The Io Passion. Martin Crimp’s concise text, made even more concise by Benjamin’s omissions (shown in the admirably detailed booklet) shapes a version of the Pied Piper story to highlight contemporary anxieties about fragile political and social structures.

But fragile is exactly what Benjamin’s music is not. The drama’s rituals are far from reassuring, and the music’s eerie colours (cornets, basset-horns, cimbalom) are the stuff of rat-infested nightmare. As always with Benjamin at his best, sonic refinement and formal lucidity lay the foundations for a uniquely involving musical experience, and having the story enacted and narrated by just two singers fits the sinister expressionism of the musical style to perfection. Instead of expansive melodic lyricism the tale demands a vocal idiom that shifts disconcertingly between fearful reticence and shrill ferocity. The recorded sound is not in itself especially vivid, but with Anu Komsi, Hilary Summers and the 15-strong Ensemble Modern all responding to Franck Ollu’s direction with razor-sharp alacrity, this unsettling piece exerts a vice-like grip.

The scene for Into the Little Hill is set by Benjamin’s daringly economical portrait of Shakespeare’s Caliban (Sometime Voices) and the haunting sequence of orchestral miniatures comprising Dance Figures. Both these performances are also from live concerts, and both get to the heart of Benjamin’s finely balanced and powerfully sculpted sound images. This is an outstanding release.