Seraphour is a Los Angeles-based solo-voice quartet of two sopranos and two altos – their name is a play on the number four combined with the name for a member of one of the nine choirs of angels. Anno Domini charts the liturgical year, and features works by composers ranging from the anonymous author of an 11th-century chant setting of In Paradisum, Allegri, (the Miserere, in a remarkably effective arrangement by Aidan Vass) Taverner and Victoria, via one of Brahms’s ‘O bone Jesu’ from his Geistleiche Chöre Op 37, Randall Thompson’s Alleluia, César Alejandro Carillo’s setting of Videntes stellam Magi, and three works by composers still in their early twenties: Mia Ruhman (O Magnum Mysterium), Aidan Vass (Veni Creator) and Yoni Vogelman (a Hebrew setting of The Song of Miriam). I very much admired the imaginative programme, including the recent pieces, but almost every performance is marred by wide vibrato that for me affects the tuning, and by the shrill quality of one or two of the voices.

★★★