It is eight years since John Rutter released his landmark recording of Mass of the Children. This new anthology collects together previously unrecorded works composed between 1996 and 2010, and displays all those traits for which Rutter’s music has become deservedly popular: smooth and engaging melodies, haunting halos of orchestration and the knack of understanding just what makes a choir tick. The music ranges from the sparklingly ceremonial (Wells Jubilate and Winchester Te Deum) to a sequence of the deeply contemplative and ruminative, in addition to the more overtly innocent (Look at the World). The programme’s centrepiece is Veni Sancte Spiritus (1998), a substantial, raw and impassioned setting in which Rutter obtains some astoundingly vivid effects in his string writing. The hand-picked Cambridge Singers perform with conviction, warmth and poise. Just occasionally there is a conflicting excess of expressive vibrato within a voice part but this is a small quibble. Laurels, too, to the RPO for its sympathetic support, especially the exquisitely creamy cor anglais solo in the Howellsian O Lord, thou hast searched me out (2007) and the cello solo in the Carol of the Magi (2010). John Birch’s organ playing (in All Hallows, Gospel Oak, London) is a mighty match for the burnished brass and percussion, all perfectly captured by the engineer.

This matchless choral feast shows Rutter at the top of his composing abilities. A first-class production.