Eriks Esenvalds is another in the ever-lengthening catalogue of highly skilled Latvian choral composers who are currently making an impact on the British choral scene. Born in 1977, he studied with a number of composers of very different styles, something that is reflected in the variability of his music. The most successful piece here, because the most consistent, is the impressive, dark and claustrophobic Legend of the Walled-in Woman (2005). It develops in sinister fashion from an Albanian folksong; the earlier recording by the Latvian Radio Choir is more convincing here, and the slower overall tempo helps. Polyphony’s rendition is excellent but they lack the distinctive timbre of the Latvians which is essential to the piece. Elsewhere they are magnificent; they seem particularly at home in the other four shorter pieces included here, especially in the lovely Long Road.

Passion and Resurrection is the longest work on the disc, an eclectic cantata setting texts from various sources (it is a shame that the booklet goes to the trouble of identifying the liturgical origin of every Western-rite piece but gives up on the Eastern texts, labelling them all, inaccurately, as “from Byzantine liturgy”). It is spun, initially, from Morales’s Parce mihi, and very effectively, but ranges through various styles in a relatively short time; anyone who responds to James MacMillan’s Seven Last Words would, I think, find this a moving, effective work. The star is soprano Carolyn Sampson, whose rich timbre and effortless ascents into the stratosphere crown this splendid performance.