This somewhat uneven collection of 21 self-styled ‘Songs of Folk and Lore’ is held together by a booklet note which charts them geographically from Canada to the USA by way of Scotland and England – mention is made of Wales purely because two Welsh-born composers are featured. While some are arrangements of genuine folk songs, others inhabit that no-man’s-land between folk and art song where a strong melody and emotionally charged words are the principal drivers. The most obvious thread running through the recording, however, is the enjoyment Noel Edison and The Elora Singers so clearly derive from performing them.

Since this is a Canadian choir, Canadian songs dominate. Derek Healey’s ‘Danse, Mon Moin, Danse’ gets a wonderfully invigorating workout, while Harry Somer’s ‘Feller from Fortune’ is given a fun twist in the tail by means of an exaggerated Newfoundland accent. Edison persuades his choir to adapt a mid-Atlantic drawl (the sort of thing favoured by some pop singers) for Leon Dubinsky’s forgettable mix of religious-revivalist and political protest ‘We rise again’. But more effective is Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘Pussy willows, cat-tails’, with its homely piano accompaniment and gently syncopated vocalisations.

Beyond the Canadian songs, Richard Marlow’s version of ‘John Brown’s body’ is quite innocuous until 1'53", at which point a quasi-gospel soprano solo pours glutinous syrup over the proceedings. Three Scottish songs are given three very different musical treatments. Jonathan Quick’s ‘Loch Lomond’ keeps the melody well to the fore while skating over a variety of choral gestures. Iain Farrington’s ‘Auld lang syne’ feels so inebriated harmonically that one suspects a surfeit of New Year spirit (in the liquid sense). Paul Mealor brings a delicious yearning quality to ‘Ae fond kiss’.

The choir is sumptuously toned and gloriously balanced in Holst’s ‘I love my love’ and Stephen Paulus’s ‘The Old Church’ but they are at their very best in the Vaughan Williams Shakespeare Songs, with ‘The Cloud-Capp’d Towers’ a shining pearl in a string of otherwise rather unevenly polished stones.