Her setting of Emily Dickinson’s Cricket, Spider, Bee (the earliest work on the disc, dating from 1996) makes a charming eight-minute triptych. Langston Hughes’s Gospel Cha Cha (2000) provides a word-painter’s paradise. Here, Ruehr successfully blends such diverse musical references as 18th-century French courtly dances and Ghanaian drumming, while eschewing an overtly jazzy style.

The programme’s centrepiece is the recent 11-movement cantata Averno from 2010. Stylistically there is little to frighten the horses, with a fondness for diatonic, repeated phrases, occasional funky, irregular bar-lengths and a solid sense of ebb and flow in the musical narrative. The text is taken from a selection of poems by the Pulitzer prize-winner Louise Glück (b1943) and retells the dark story of Demeter, goddess of the earth, and her daughter Persephone. Due to the complexity of some of the vocal writing it is essential that the libretto is on hand. The scoring is a marvel of delicacy and brought to mind the fleeting lightness of John Williams’s score for Catch me if you can. At other moments there are hints of early Kenneth Leighton, especially in the writing for oboe and strings.

Of the two soloists, baritone Stephen Salters gives the more searingly satisfying performance. Marguerite Krull’s vibrato, recorded at close quarters, can become wearing. Otherwise the singing, playing and production are all first-class.