Music of profound spirituality or glum monotony? I can imagine listeners having either of these responses, or elements of both, after hearing Philippe Hersant’s setting of Psalm 130 – the De Profundis – preceded by his version of the relevant Bach chorale from Cantata 38. Admired by Dutilleux, echoing composers such as Fauré, Poulenc and Duruflé, Hersant (b1948) works in a style that has turned its face against French progressiveness in the manner of Messiaen, Boulez, or the younger Spectralists. But the main problem I hear in the works on this disc is not so much one of style as of form – the risk of lapsing into what the title of the last Poème chinois describes as ‘endless meanders’.In fact, the set of eight Poèmes chinois (2003) is the work I’ve found most appealing, setting the concise texts without excessive whimsy and with some effective pictorialisms for the ‘White monkeys’ of No 2 and ‘The cormorant’ of No 4. Here the musical echoes include Britten and even the early Malcolm Williamson. On the other hand, in Der Wanderer, to a potently surreal poem by Georg Trakl, a spirit of blandly generalised melancholy takes over, and despite the allusions to Liszt’s late piano piece La lugubre gondole which Hersant mentions in his notes, little of the compelling austerity of that terse masterpiece survives here.

Melancholy also pervades Le chemin de Jérusalem, for viola da gamba, as well as Psalm 130, where the use of a high-lying soprano solo in the later stages fails to lift the mood into those more tranquil regions implied by the text. What is intended to be rapt and transcendent risks seeming murky and static, despite competent performances and recording.