Bob Chilcott is the master of musical pragmatism, making the absolute most of limited forces and abilities. If that sounds like damning with faint praise, it’s anything but. Chilcott’s is a serious and deeply necessary skill, generating practical, enjoyable music for churches, schools and community ensembles. This album brings together Chilcott’s recent music for young voices – all recorded here for the first time – including the choral miniature Five Days that Changed the World, The Miracle of the Spring for choir and percussion, and the large-scale cantata The Angry Planet.

What’s most impressive here is the range of textures and effects Chilcott conjures from his choirs. Pairing adult SATB forces – here the BBC Singers and The Bach Choir – with youth ensembles – Finchley Children’s Music Group, London Youth Choir, The Young Singers – he offers everything from thick homophony to pulsing ostinatos and even spoken text against a background of aleatoric murmurings. All are clearly articulated and differentiated in performances directed by David Hill, though it would have been nice to hear The Miracle of the Spring (composed originally for the choir of Magdalen College School, Oxford) sung by children rather than the BBC Singers. The musical theatre-style delivery of the Finchley children in The Angry Planet won’t be to everyone’s taste – markedly less sophisticated than their performance in Five Days – but it does bring a necessary dramatic friction to Charles Bennett’s text, frantic with fears of climate change.

This isn’t an album to listen to at a sitting; breathless urgency and wide-eyed wonder, demanded by Bennett’s issue-driven texts, lose their charge at such length. But as a resource, a set of excellent performances (especially of the title-work, with its demanding interconnected choirs), it’s a welcome addition to the catalogue.