Between 2010 and 2013 Gabriel Jackson was Associate Composer at the BBC Singers and in that time produced eight works for them, four of which are recorded for the first time here. The fifth, The Voice of the Bard, has already appeared on disc in a vivid performance by the State Choir Latvia (Hyperion, 3/13). The BBC Singers certainly give that outstanding choir a run for their money, although under Māris Sirmais the Latvians seem to communicate the piece rather more compellingly.

As technically challenging and vividly exhibitionist as The Voice of the Bard and recorded on the same occasion (in 2011 in St Paul’s Church Knightsbridge; the other tracks were recorded between 2013 and 2014 in Maida Vale studios), Ruchill Linn is a setting of words by Robin Bell evoking his native Perthshire. With the whole choir imitating the call of a curlew and the sopranos cascading to depict a waterfall, this is full of blatantly picturesque imagery, yet Jackson’s wonderfully rich tapestry of choral textures makes it all musically convincing.

The two major works on the disc are the Choral Symphony, Jackson’s homage both to the city of London and to the BBC Singers, who deliver its often monumental technical challenges with impressive self-assurance, and the Airplane Cantata, in which the singers are joined by a pianola (chosen, it would seem, since the rise of the pianola coincided with the development of powered flight which the text celebrates). Rex Lawson is an apt partner for the crisply precise choral singing James Morgan draws from his singers. Whether Jackson uses this material as anything more than an excuse to put the singers through a series of daunting technical hoops is open to question; but, with such luminous diction and an enchanting collective buoyancy, the sound of the BBC Singers here is, in itself, something not to be missed.