These artists have already served notice of their commitment to this exquisitely wrought repertoire with an uncommonly beautiful recording (10/23) of Stanford’s Op 119 set of Eight Part-Songs – by far the best known of which remains the indestructibly lovely ‘The Blue Bird’. Now they lavish their superlative skills on its companion collection (also composed in 1910) of Eight Part-Songs, Op 127 – once again, all settings of posthumously published poetry by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861-1907), of which only three (‘Veneta’, ‘When Mary thro’ the garden went’ and the extraordinarily intense ‘The Haven’) have previously appeared on disc. Who could resist the achingly tender ‘Plighted’ (a love poem also chosen by Parry in Set 9 of his English Lyrics), exultant ‘To a tree’ (in a gloriously opulent D flat major) or the narrative flair of ‘The Guest’ and ‘Wilderspin’?

Stanford left us three sets of Six Elizabethan Pastorals, the earliest of which was completed in August 1892 and bears a dedication to his RCM colleague Walter Parratt (co-director of the Windsor and Eton Amateur and Madrigal Choral Societies). Responding to the craze for a cappella singing ignited by the formation (in 1886) of Lionel Benson’s Magpie Minstrels, and employing 16th-century texts previously set by both John Dowland and Francis Pilkington, it comprises a captivatingly idiomatic and diverse sequence, the part-writing memorably assured. Try the alluring ‘Corydon, arise!’ and vernally fresh ‘Diaphenia’ (both from Englands Helicon, first published in 1600).

Inspiration likewise runs high in the Op 78 Six Irish Folk Songs from 1901, taken from the 1894 anthology entitled The Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore, the Original Airs Restored for Voice. Stanford characteristically ensures that all four voices in these SATB arrangements receive their fair share of the thematic limelight, and there’s plenty of stylistic and emotional variety, too. Four of the tunes that feature in the previously unrecorded Nine Irish Folk Songs – its manuscript undated, but almost certainly written in Stanford’s final years – are also drawn from Moore’s Melodies, while the remaining five emanate from Songs of Old Ireland (published in 1882, with texts by Albert Perceval Graves), not least the gorgeous ‘When she answered me’ (a favourite of that great Irish baritone Harry Plunket Greene). There are also a couple of melodies – the stirring ‘Awake, awake, Fianna’ and heartfelt ‘Silence is in our festal halls’ – that Stanford enthusiasts will recognise from their inclusion in the orchestral Second and Fifth Irish Rhapsodies from 1903 and 1917 respectively. Coro’s generous programme concludes with Emer’s Farewell to Cucullain, an arrangement for SATB from 1923 to the tune of our old friend, the Londonderry Air.

Prospective listeners can rest easy that everything has been captured by the microphones with breathtaking naturalness. In addition to Jeremy Dibble’s personable and scholarly annotation, the booklet contains full texts and some introductory remarks by The Sixteen’s founder and director, Harry Christophers, who contributes some perceptive observations about Stanford’s exceptional gifts and the project as a whole (‘the experience was amazingly rewarding and beautifully refreshing’). Make no mistake, this is an outstanding album.