I was mesmerised by Ondine’s album of orchestral works by Žibuoklė Martinaitytė (4/21) but then, that’s the whole point of her music: slowly unfolding, gradually transforming, reverberating through its chosen union of instruments with a combination of colossal expanse and extreme restraint. This newcomer focuses on voices, giving us four hefty pieces ranging in length from 13 to 16 minutes, which set not words but vowels and consonants, precisely ordered even if they meld into one another.

It was working on the earliest of them, The Blue of Distance, that the Lithuanian composer had a revelation – abandoning the Latin text she was straitjacketing her music into, concluding instead that the music’s shoal-like movement and variegated currents would be better off without them. The piece is born on a hum before mouths open; it flutters, dissipates and reassembles.

Positioned last on this disc, that work’s construction principles are clearly taken forwards in the works that, chronologically, followed. ALETHEIA depicts a whole life lived, ‘from a baby’s scream to the last dying breath’, in a rallying cry for humanity in the face of war (it was written as Russia invaded Ukraine). Much of the piece is anchored by the same pedal note; there are elements of throat singing (as in Ululations) and of ritual chant in the less minimalistic, primeval-feeling passage that takes root a little over halfway through.

Chant de voyelles takes its name from a series of bronze sculptures by Lithuanian-born Jacques Lipchitz, themselves named after an ancient Egyptian prayer preserved on papyrus consisting only of vowels. It takes as a starting point the idea that vowels themselves can trigger the overtone series, and for the most part Martinaitytė handles them with extraordinary care – as barely perceptible shifts in cloud formation or atmospheric pressure. Sometimes the music opens up: there are breaks, ruptures, moments of radiance and, eventually, a series of short exhortations before the music coils down through closing mouths.

Ululations takes its title from an onomatopoeic word suggesting a ritualistic expression of mourning. The wordless chorus passage in Britten’s Billy Budd, just after Billy is hanged, would fit the description and some passages of Martinaitytė’s piece indeed resemble that extraordinary moment in the opera. The entire piece is derived from an ululating gesture and is less static than its companions here – going full stratospheric at the end – and therefore less mysterious and postmodern, where the other works invite audience response and interpretation. On which point, perhaps the fact this music has no words allows an entirely different level of listener engagement (perhaps ‘inhabitation’ is a better word). Remarkable works, to which the Latvian Radio Choir and Sigvards Kļava bring all their unmatched qualities; in the moment, you can’t imagine it being sung or conducted by anyone else.