The lost city is Jerusalem, and it is the Lamentations of Jeremiah that provides the text of the nine pieces recorded here. The centrepiece is the triptych by John Duggan (b1963), cofounder of Sospiri. It follows the convention of beginning with the ‘Incipit’, prefacing each verse with a Hebrew letter, and ending with the ‘Jerusalem’ refrain. The trumpet plays in these sections but is silent in the verses. Susanna Fairbairn and Robert Vanryne duet sweetly in the first ‘panel’; the second is even more striking, the soprano soaring over the women’s chorus. I hope that the unusual scoring will not deter other choirs from taking up this beautiful 15-minute piece.

Everything else on the disc is a cappella. Cecilia McDowall (b1951) sets less familiar verses from the Lamentations but ends with the usual refrain. Here it is two solo sopranos superimposed on the choir, the mood relatively positive. Three pieces actually begin with the words ‘O vos omnes’ (‘Is it nothing to you…’). The one by Casals is simple and direct; the setting by Pablo Ortiz (b1956) makes effective use of overlapping chords. Neither is as memorable as Vaughan Williams’s version, mainly for high voices. It is recognisably from the same workshop, so to speak, as the Mass in G minor.

The Lamentations by the early-16th-century Dominique Phinot is mightily pleasing in its balance and variety of texture. Another high point is John Mundy’s De Lamentatione, reconstructed by Francis Steele and full of glorious harmonic clashes. Christopher Watson and Sospiri do it proud.