But why talk of death? These performances were recorded live during the opening concert of The Sixteen’s 2009 Choral Pilgrimage to celebrate both Purcell’s 350th birthday and Scottish composer James MacMillan’s 50th. Thus, while the anthems, motets and the first set of Funeral Sentences by Purcell presented here definitely tend towards the sombre, and MacMillan’s musical language often has recourse to a stark muscularity, the darkness invariably gives way to light in the form of ecstatic melismas and lucent major-mode harmonies.

Throughout, the choral sound is rich yet unfailingly transparent – as obvious in the opening Jehova quam multi sunt hostes mei of Purcell as in MacMillan’s masterly O bone Jesu. But the solo work is equally impressive – listen, for example, to tenors Simon Berridge and Mark Dobell and bass Eamonn Dougan in Purcell’s Let mine eyes run down with tears or sopranos Grace Davidson and Charlotte Mobbs in the same composer’s splendid O dive custos.

Christophers’s direction is, as always, forever alert to the relationship between words and music – especially close with these two composers – while ensuring the careful delineation of the overall musical structure and each phrase, period and paragraph within it. Some minor blemishes aside, “Bright Orb of Harmony” deserves to be set among that constellation of previous dazzling recordings by an ensemble that is less a choir, more an institution.