I absolutely loved this programme, built around works commissioned to provide singable, seasonal contemporary music for the very accomplished voluntary mixed voice choir that sings services at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, when the flagship choir is unavailable. It takes its title from an exquisite Christ Church Mass in Latin by Grayston Ives, full of expressive tenderness, which builds to an ecstatic climax in the ‘Agnus Dei’. The movements are interspersed with two gorgeous motets: Bertie Baigent setting the Herbert poem ‘Rise heart’, combined with the Second Responsory for Matins on Easter Monday in Latin, while Ben Rowarth’s ‘A New Year Carol’ is the highlight of the disc for me, a jewel-like masterpiece with a shimmering setting of ‘Sing levy dew…’. The choir’s former Director James Potter’s two alternative canticles for evening prayer, beginning with plainchant but expanding into sinuous harmony, really appealed to me; and anthems by Sarah Rinkus, Alison Willis and David Bednall are also very impressive. Simon Hogan finds some delicious colours on the Tickell organ of Keble College, where the recording was made, in his accompaniments and in a movement from Anthony Gray’s ‘An Aquinian Sequence’ for solo organ, and concludes the album with a stirring performance of a Toccata by Cheryl Frances-Hoad.