Unquestionably the State Choir Latvia is a magnificent body of singers. They encompass a vast dynamic range and deliver words and music with impeccable precision and clarity. All this is superbly demonstrated in a vivid account of The Voice of the Bard. Marshalled by Māris Sirmais, they thrill with their rhythmically compelling opening unisons, entice with their delicate chording at ‘Whose ears have heard’ and soothe with their lilting harmonic underlay for ‘Calling the lapsed soul’.

They are even more vividly in their element with the disc’s atmospheric title-song, A ship with unfurled sails; as well they might, since this was inspired by the vocal and literary traditions of the Baltic lands. At least, that seems to be what Andrew Stewart’s dense booklet-notes tell us, although it is not always easy to distil pure information from his torrents of hyperbole. He writes, for example, of ‘creative ideas being forced to conform to the limits of a narrow Procrustean bed’, which is another way of saying that juxtaposing Kaspars Zemītis’s electric guitar and the choir is imaginative. Which it is, even if Ave regina caelorum occasionally sounds as if solo riffs from a nearby rock session have accidentally found their way on to the finished master. That said, there are places where Jackson’s imagination has yielded breathtaking results: an outburst of energy at 6'05", or the lovely linking of the guitar with Inese Romancane’s sweet soprano and a whispering choral accompaniment at 9'38".

Most of this music was, however, conceived for rather smaller and more discreet vocal forces, and often there is a sense of its being overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the choral sound. An impressive choir performing truly impressive music, certainly, but it seems more a marriage of convenience than a match made in heaven.