ROXANNA PANUFNIK (b.1968): Love Endureth for Choir (VOCES8 & friends; Barnaby Smith), Love Abide for Mezzo-Soprano, Baritone, Choir and Orchestra (Heather Shipp [mezzo], Mark Stone [baritone], London Oratory School Schola, Colla Voce Singers, London Mozart Players;  Lee Ward), Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis for Choir and Organ (Exultate Singers, Richard Johnson [organ], David Ogden [conductor]), Zen Love Song for Choir and Shakuhachi (VOCES8, Kiku Day [shakuhachi]; Smith), Schola Missa de Angelis for Choir and String Orchestra (London Oratory School Schola, London Mozart Players;  Ward), Mass of the Angels for Choir and Organ (London Oratory School Schola, Tom Little [organ]; Ward).

Description: These varied works around the theme of love in its various manifestations - spiritual, religious and romantic rather than erotic - draw on texts from the Bible, the Mass, Hebrew psalms, 15th-century Japanese poetry and the Sufi mystic Rumi. The composer's basic vocabulary is firmly grounded in tonality, not unlike that of her illustrious father, though with a greater emphasis on consonance; persistent ostinato figuration consisting of rhythmically incisive melodic cells at various points in the finely judged, vividly colored instrumental accompaniments also seem to be something of an inherited characteristic. Rhythms and modal inflections characteristic of the cultures represented in the texts are seamlessly interpolated into the music, expanding its emotional and cultural reach outside that of the English cathedral tradition into which much of it, especially the Mass of the Angels (a condensed English version of the Latin Schola Missa de Angelis with its pastoral, Elgarian string accompaniment) might easily blend and in the process, enrich it. Texts included.