Ned Rorem is an all-round composer with significant contributions in every medium. The years around his 80th birthday have brought some fine new recordings in both orchestral and chamber music. Now come two major song-cycles from British performers. The Auden Songs (1989) set some famous poems, starting with the demanding “Shield of Achilles”, a story of violence worthy of the Middle East today. Rorem’s accompaniment is for string quartet and piano and he often uses the instruments selectively. There’s a long cello solo before “Lay your sleeping head” and then a catchy sequential phrase dominates the scene. “Epitaph” has a mesmeric atmosphere with just voice and piano. The performance from Christopher Lemmings, widely admired in so many modern operas, has total authority and conviction. Permission to print the texts must have been expensive – all the more reason for better proof-reading.

The earlier Santa Fe Songs (1980) to poems by New Mexico poet Witter Bynner use the same integration of song-cycle and chamber music. Here the approach is looser, more improvisatory, than in the Auden settings. In both cycles Rorem matches the intensity of the poems but occasionally he seems to have missed their lighter aspects. Sara Fulgoni is reliable but vocally rather full-toned for some of these moods.

Yet another side of Rorem is represented by the works for choir and organ. If you’ve read the Diaries it may seem odd to think of Rorem as a religious composer. He’s admitted he doesn’t believe in God but in the sincerity of belief itself. “Arise, shine” is an exhilarating invocation; and, from the Seven Motets, “God is gone up” contains a fascinating variety of ways of setting “alleluia” and “Praise him who was crucified” sounds convincingly pious. Overall this is a revelatory corpus of choral works, with or without organ, which ought to be of interest to cathedral choirs.

Carson Cooman contributes effective organ solos where, like the choral pieces, everything is refreshingly different. Both well recorded CDs have thoroughly informative notes from Russell Platt.