Never having knowingly heard any of Edward Nesbit’s work before, I had no idea what to expect of his choral music. In fact, this is one of the most interesting recordings of contemporary choral writing I have heard in some time. In his booklet note, the composer situates himself as someone with an early training in choral singing (having been a chorister at Tewkesbury Abbey), but whose compositional interests and techniques have tended towards the complex, and therefore more suitable for instrumental performance. ‘It is therefore’, he says, ‘with both surprise and a feeling of inevitability that I find myself a little over a decade after my student years presenting a portrait album of my choral music.’

The pull between these two strands is heard immediately in the substantial Mass, which brings together a Renaissance-inspired transparency of texture, use of the medieval technique of hocket, though at a very slow pace, and, especially in the Gloria, highly florid and technically demanding solo writing (superbly dispatched by soprano Ruby Hughes). There is much interesting textural writing to be heard throughout the work, but this is never gratuitous ‘atmosphere’; there is always a sense of a larger narrative. Indeed, Nesbit is also an assured melodist, an important element in this.

While the sequence of five Evening Psalms is in some ways of more traditional Anglican cast (I think of the lush harmonic writing of Psalm 67, for example), there is also much use of techniques that can hardly be described as being in everyday use in liturgical music for the Church of England. One of the most striking aspects in these settings is the virtuoso use of the organ (superbly played by Joshua Simões) as a kind of commentator on the choral music. Nesbit’s fluency in writing for the instrument is also apparent in the solo organ work Fanfares and Rounds.

Rounding off the album is Nesbit’s setting of the Evening Canticles, perhaps the most straightforward music in this collection, though, as the composer points out, the Magnificat is not a conventional expression of joy. The singing throughout is magnificent, controlled but glowingly rich in sonority, and conductor Joseph Fort shapes these performance with consummate artistry. Highly recommended.