When it comes to choral music in Britain, are there more powerful kingmakers than Stephen Layton and The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge? Just look through the back catalogue of single-composer recitals: Paweł Łukaszewski (A/08); Ēriks Ešenvalds (3/15); Owain Park (A/18); Jaakko Mäntyjärvi (A/20) – names we all now know but who were (mostly) far from established in this country beforehand. So when a new recording – and a new name – drops, you pay attention.

Better known in the US, where he has had major performances at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, Swiss composer Ivo Antognini celebrates his 60th birthday this year. Early work in jazz, television and film all feeds into choral music that’s immensely grateful and singable – written with real understanding of voices and of different kinds of ensembles (works here are written for everything from his wife’s local church choir to Trinity itself), squeezing the greatest impact from whatever forces and ability are available. It’s music that you want to sing, want to programme liturgically; I’m just not sure it’s music you necessarily want to listen to for an unbroken hour. Antognini has a sweet tooth harmonically, has never met a suspension he didn’t like, and the risk is that it all becomes a little undifferentiated.

There are, broadly, two modes: thick divisi radiance, heavy with low bass subwoofers (the very first chord of the disc vibrates up through your feet) and wide-spread clusters; and energised dance anthems, grooving with syncopation, that have ‘choral competition sure-thing’ written all over them. Canticum novum is the pick of the latter numbers – playful, insistently catchy and just a little bit Broadway. Of the former, the simple, four-part O magnum mysterium has a graceful sincerity about it, while Surge amica takes the excuse of its Song of Songs text to get sexy, smearing and smudging chords with reckless, generous depth.

Antognini favours Latin texts – and short ones at that. His Alleluia follows successfully in Randall Thompson’s footsteps, making a properly attractive anthem from a single word. But the sense mostly – from both these and the English-texted secular pieces – is that the composer is better at a more generalised, melody-driven spirit than word-painting per se. Latin works best, as meaning doesn’t obtrude too obviously. Emily Dickinson’s ‘little bird’ in Hope is the thing with feathers, for example, emerges as surprisingly chunky and heavy of foot.

Trinity are on fine form: youthful, but firmly muscled and fearless, with Layton encouraging an open, fuller sound than the Oxbridge standard. They make their case for Antognini as a sugary part of the Anglican choral diet – just not the whole meal.