Jēkabs Jančevskis (b1992) personifies the next generation of Latvian choral composers after Ēriks Ešenvalds, his teacher. On the evidence of this recording, he has found subtle and authentic ways of furthering the distinctive sound of Latvian choral music established in the last century.

That sound is inextricably linked to a national singing style – chamber choirs slightly larger than we’re used to in the West, with the same level of discipline, tonal strength and purity but a softer edge and a delivery that tends to be lined with vulnerability and emotional ferocity. It’s no accident that The Mixed Choir of Riga Cathedral Choir School demonstrates those qualities – together with apparently huge reserves of latent power – and that the music of this, one of its alumni, does too (conductor Jurģis Cābulis shared a class with the composer).

Much of the music here deals with personal and national pain in the Baltic tradition. Ar zvaigžņu kluso gaismu (‘Silent Starlight’) commemorates the 52 killed when a supermarket roof collapsed in Riga in 2013, a memorial slab in music that becomes a repeating chant, linked by the sounds of the kokle – a Baltic psaltery associated with funerals. Aeternum salutes Latvian independence but includes a cry of pain before it drifts into ‘the eternal’ with a remarkable image of infinite space. Distance is also captured in the separate choirs of When, using Juliet’s words from Shakespeare, another highlight.

Often Jančevskis includes subtle additions that are not overindulged: microtonality, whistling, whispering, supplementary instruments, unusual vocal techniques referencing animal life or vernacular traditions (though the last work, The Button, is weakened for throwing too much of everything at the wall). That restraint mostly extends to the material and its treatment; all the breath-sounds of Odpyw dredge up is one big harmonic gesture, and it’s enough.

Few more beautiful realisations of Latvia’s choral language have come my way in the past decade but the music treads a treacherous line between the searching and the passé, crossing it once or twice, and the radio studio sound (why not the cathedral?) sometimes suggests a little trickery. I’m tempted to conclude that, at his best, Jančevskis mines more successfully into the base material of that language – thickened harmonies that glance east to Russia, parallel harmonies that look north to Estonia, deeply expressive arioso-style melody rooted in Latvia’s opera tradition – than his teacher. One wonders where that Latvian sound can go and what events will shape it. There’s plenty of time for Jančevskis, still in his twenties, to think on that.