Christopher Bowers-Broadbent (organ), NYYD Quartet, Ars Nova Copenhagen, Theatre of Voices/Paul HillierHarmonia Mundi HMU 807553 *****

The longest of the 10 works recorded here is the Stabat Mater of 1985, which Paul Hillier sees as a piece of chamber music that just happens to be written for three voices and string trio. The most recent is The Deer's Cry (2007), which was commissioned by the Louth Contemporary Music Society and premiered in Drogheda in 2008. Hillier and his colleagues are fully at ease with the slowness of undertow and sense of near-repose that the unfolding self-similarity creates in so many of the pieces here. And they rightly often glory in the glowing resonances they're presented with. The patient, softly-contoured gentleness they bring to the start of The Deer's Cry is mesmerising and makes the stresses of its later insistence – climax seems too strong a word – all the more effective. url.ie/55ay