This is a disc of pure ‘mood’ music. Whether the mood it creates in the listener is hypnotic or soporific, there is nothing here which is going to disturb it. Suffice it to say that while sour old Benjamin Britten found something slightly bitter in the words of O Waly Waly and added a touch of acid to his classic arrangement, nice Patrick Hawes sees only sweetness and light. His arrangement, sung with disarming clarity by Timothy Bennett and Conventus against the most harmless of orchestral accompaniments, is utterly nice. Indeed it’s all so nice it’s almost terminal.

The disc’s title comes from an ‘ambient’ setting for choir, harp and synthesizer of just seven words by the composer’s brother, but the most substantial work here is a set of variations on Stanford’s part-song The Bluebird. If, as the booklet notes tell us, this is a ‘contemporary gloss’ on Stanford’s original, then that great old teacher must be turning in his grave as he sees how far British music seems to have regressed. Stanford’s original is given out in various size chunks by Conventus, a choir selected from ‘the cream of young British vocal talent’ (my doctor has warned me off cream on health grounds), while harmless interjections from the orchestra and vocal soloists manage to spin it out for 27 minutes of cloying atmosphere.

The voices seem to have been chosen for their pure, almost childlike quality, and while the ECO might be up to their usual standard – certainly there’s some lovely solo clarinet playing – they have been so cocooned in a halo of atmospheric ambience (more the result, dare I suggest, of the mixing desk than St Jude’s-on-the-Hill, London?) that the result is a featureless veneer of sound. Those who, like me, like a bit of excitement every now and again, may want to look elsewhere.