Troubled times often prompt creative responses that bring out the human qualities lying within us – tolerance, compassion, dignity and consideration for one another. Given the events that have taken place since its premiere at the Barbican centre in February this year, Max Richter’s Voices has acquired an almost prophetic aura. Its release is nothing if not topical.

Scored for solo soprano and violin, choir, piano, electronics, percussion and string orchestra, the work is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Selections from the original text are heard throughout the work’s 55-minute time span that begins with Eleanor Roosevelt’s voice from a recording made in 1949. Actress KiKi Layne’s unfussy narration connects contributions heard from various voices, many of which appear in languages other than English.

Although Richter does not set any part of the written text (both chorus and soprano Grace Davidson sing wordlessly throughout), words and music are woven seamlessly – the implication being that the latter offers a reflective commentary on the former. (The accompanying second disc, comprising ‘voiceless’ mixes of the same music, may appear to contradict this idea, but should be viewed simply as bonus material.)

Rather like the declaration itself, the impact of Voices lies in the way in which short musical statements form building blocks in a larger edifice that adds up to more. Nevertheless, the work’s most effective moments are heard when Richter’s ideas are drawn out into extended musical shapes and gestures, such as during the Górecki-style ‘Chorale’, where Davidson’s soprano line gradually ascends by step to a dizzyingly vertiginous top C, supported by floating arpeggios in low strings. ‘Murmuration’ combines voices and strings to create rich, immersive layers of ambient-like slow-motion sound, while in ‘Little Requiems’ Davidson’s rising lines return to create one of those spine-tingling moments where the voice literally floats free of itself. The shorter, piano-based episodes are perhaps less effective – certainly more derivative – in their use of Glass-like figurations.

Davidson’s outstanding performance on this recording is matched by the equally impressive Mari Samuelsen on violin, whose rendition of ‘Mercy’ – the concluding track on the album that prompted Richter to think up the Voices project back in 2010 – is far more impassioned and full-blooded than Hilary Hahn’s more reserved interpretation on ‘In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores’ (DG, 3/14). Another prophetic sign of the times, perhaps.