With a premiere at the Proms and the release of this, the second Naxos disc devoted to her music, Judith Bingham is very much in the spotlight. While she is best known – and best represented on disc – as a choral composer, it is the organ that has come to the forefront in recent months.

Bingham’s interest in the organ was first fired when she sang in a church choir and much of the music here reflects a composer fascinated by the church and its scriptures. That is certainly the case with Jacob’s Ladder, a mini-concerto for organ and strings. The organ-writing may not be entirely idiomatic but the string scoring is highly accomplished, and there is a real sense of commitment behind Graham Ross’s sharply focused direction. While the Dmitri Ensemble is not without its weaknesses – not least in the delicate string-writing at the start of the final movement – Tom Winpenny brings assurance with some adept handling of Bingham’s complex organ-writing.

Organ solo movements taken from the Mass offer up an opportunity to compare this with Robert Quinney on his recording of the complete work (Hyperion, 8/05) and, while the Naxos recording is, sadly, no match in either acoustic atmosphere or clarity of detail, it is more than good enough to reveal Winpenny’s confident handling of the St Albans instrument, even if those cloying passages which sound awfully like an organist’s Sunday evening doodling (the Mass’s Preamble, St Bride, Assisted by Angels and the rather aimless Hope are prime examples) need a little more focus.

Some of the music, notably Vol de nuit and Annunication I with its reference to Jehan Alain, carries on where the French organ composers of the mid-20th century left off and so calls for considerable technical virtuosity as well as a powerful command of registration. In both areas Winpenny does not disappoint, and his advocacy of this music will do much to consolidate Bingham’s reputation as a distinctive and assured writer for the instrument.