Coro was formed in September 2000, and in 2003 became the first western European choir to win the Tallinn International Choral Competition. This sincere and craftsmanlike album functions like a prospectus, showcasing selections from their Estonian concerts, pieces reflecting director Mark Griffiths’s experiences during a travelling fellowship at US universities, and staples from their Christmas and summer concerts.

Their range is wide, from Tudor masters Weelkes and Tomkins to contemporary American whizz-kid Eric Whitacre, and perhaps a little too wide. Coro is, Griffiths explains, in demand for weddings and corporate events and therefore needs pieces like Blue Skies and Chatanooga in its repertoire. That’s as maybe, but it’s no excuse for committing them to record. I agree with the late satirist Linda Smith, who consigned classical performers singing arrangements of pop music to Room 101.

However, Coro balance these out with the inclusion of commendable performances of Morten Lauridsen’s O magnum mysterium, Rachmaninov’s Ave Maria and Whitacre’s Sleep, although if you’re especially interested in Whitacre you may want to check Polyphony’s recent CD of his work on Hyperion (4/06).

The choir sound most convincing and at home with the early 20th-century English composers. Although the performances were recorded in a church there’s a curiously soft acoustic which does no favours to the sopranos and altos and intensifies my feeling that I should be listening dressed in tweeds, surrounded by tapestry-hung oak-panelling. This is particularly inappropriate on the Tudor pieces, where radiance rather than worsted warmth is the thing.