‘What did you say?’, the opening phrase of James MacMillan’s Cantos sagrados abruptly demands. But the answer here is in absolutely no doubt. From that first earth-shattering orchestral down-beat, through the peremptory intensity of the repeated choral question, you are pinned in place, attention seized, ears ringing. Premiered in 1990, MacMillan’s miniature cantata (lasting just 20 minutes) was originally scored for choir and organ. But in 1998 the National Youth Choir of Scotland’s Christopher Bell commissioned an arrangement with orchestra and the thrilling, chilling result – recorded here for the first time, astonishingly – makes it hard to contemplate ever returning to the original with its more subdued colours.

The NYCOS and Royal Scottish National Orchestra seize the possibilities of a piece so much bigger in stature than length and refuse to relinquish a moment of drama, articulation, contrast or precision. A work that marries political activism with faith pairs traditional spiritual texts with contemporary writing on the violent repression in Latin America. Tone jangles from ferocity, entries ricocheting to and fro, chatter building into collective rage, to lulling prayer and meditation. It’s a supremely effective work impeccably delivered by these young and agile singers.

The choir’s superb technique is even more evident in the two Eric Whitacre works – Leonardo Dreams of his Flying Machine and When David heard, with their demanding contrapuntal and textural effects. Light and gauzy in the former, rhythms beating engine-crisp, the choir come into their own in the sustained intensity of the latter – a setting of a single sentence from the Book of Samuel that packs a father’s grief and guilt into just a few words.

Bell has chosen his programme carefully, finishing with Tippett’s familiar Spirituals and Thea Musgrave’s unexpected, aphoristic miniatures On the Underground, Set 2: The Strange and the Exotic, rounding it all off with a juicy encore in the form of Franz Biebl’s unapologetically lush Ave Maria. What a treat.