While not an exclusively Russian phenomenon, the choir concerto flourished there during the 18th and early 19th centuries – reaching its apex with the work of Dmitry Bortnyansky (1751-1825), before its revival in the post-war era (notably Alfred Schnittke’s magisterial example from 1985). The four pieces featured here follow directly, if never slavishly, in that tradition.

Within this context, Vadim Salmanov’s Swan Maiden (1967) was an undoubted breakthrough by deriving inspiration not from sacred music but from Russian folk sources – though no traditional tunes appear over its five movements. Division between solo and ensemble groups is abetted by recourse to recited and shouted passages, in what was evidently a provocative move at this time. A decade on, the other pieces adopt a more nuanced approach to their cultural ‘present’.

Inspired by Mikhail Sholokhov’s novel, Sergey Slonimsky’s And Quiet Flows the Don (1977) draws on old Cossack songs for a text whose setting utilises modality and solo singing in its incisive reappraisal of tradition. Lucian Prigozhin’s Symphony in Rituals (1978) is both more formally methodical and evocatively expressive in alternating between songs and interludes (denoted by plaintive oboe soliloquys) that suggest archaic practices played out in inherently abstract terms. Yuri Falik’s Poesas of Igor Severyanin (1979) deploys texts by the early 20th-century poet in a suite whose titles indicate the musical archetype specific to each movement.

Performances unfailingly convey the eloquence and vitality of this music, in another valuable restoration from that seemingly endless resource which is the St Petersburg Musical Archive.